US 'fails to account' for Iraq reconstruction billions

US 'fails to account' for Iraq reconstruction billions

www.bbc.co.uk

A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money.

Out of just over $9bn (£5.8bn), $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Are they serious?

How the heck do you 'lose' nearly 9 billion?

Has it gone towards rebuilding or has it been syphoned off in some way?
Where has it gone and who has it?

In a response attached to the report, it said attempting to account for the money might require "significant archival retrieval efforts".

...a lack of proper accounting makes it impossible to say exactly what happened to most of the money.

This is not the first time that allegations of missing billions have surfaced in relation to the US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath.

Just who is getting this money?
How can it be so difficult to retrieve the archived accounting?

Something (yet again) is very, very wrong with the way all of this is going on. It's getting that everyday we hear about total incompetence or outright corruption yet we still blunder on blindly and quietly

When will it stop?

www.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

I'm an iraqi and the biggest problem is the corrupt politicians that the US put forward for the iraqis. lets be honest, most iraqis dont have the power to do anything, because there is no unity between them. you have politicians earning more money than obama, free trips and a free car and a free house in the green zone just for following the prime minister around. those politicians dont even live in iraq, but in iraq they have 50+ guards waiting for them and a villa the size of a football pitch, the sad thing is that their job is just to hold a paper and pen for 1 hour a day/week and then they go home.

there has been many stories of corrupt iraqi politicians becoming millionaires over night.

many of those iraqis start their own militias with 1000+ armed men. now how the hell do you get weapons and feed 1000 men? from the money they stole.

they claim they are religious but you will see many iraqi politicians in syrian night clubs chasing after young girls.

I have been screaming about this for years. Obama disappoints me in that he hasn't gone after this. If anyone, anywhere lost even ONE billion dollars his butt would be grass plain and simple. Congress doesn't even ask where this money went. It just shameful.

You know where it went, right into war profiteers, Bush and Cheney and their ilks pockets.

God the US government and forces actions in Iraq seem to be corrupt and fraudulent I nearly fell off my chair reading this revelation and in other news the sky is blue and water is wet

Has anyone checked the deep pockets of contractors employed in Iraq? At one point the US was giving away money to anyone who said they had a project in Iraq, well it was mostly Halliburton. I would start there and end off at Iraqi politicians.

I think the Iraqi politicians were paid to let our country get raped. Those funding were supposed to go to rebuilding Iraq not building bigger mansions out in Beverly Hills.

Somehow the system just isn't working anymore.

The money went to Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld et al.

Halliburton/KBR were just the fronts. Massive payoffs to corrupt Iraqi officials to look the other way, as previously mentioned. Jay Garner was a straight shooter, wouldn't play ball. They stuck Bremer in there and,

So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?

At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared.

source

He knows, but he can't talk around the wad of hundreds stuck in his mouth.

TPTB are are like the mob. They've got their own little club and they call the shots and take the money.
They laugh it up at our expense.

reply to post by Extralien


I used to get shocked when I read these things but now that trillions are stolen every couple of years, a few billion seems insignificant. /sarcasm

The 104-acre US built compound, bigger than the Vatican, was accounted for I bet.

Can they be sued? What good is a watchdog group with no power?

NOW do you see why no one is in a hurry to end any of the wars? Is it any surprise that all of the rationale orginally given for going to war in the first place was a load of crap? The very nature of a foreign war allows for all sorts of accounting 'problems'. Smedley Butler was right, 'War is a racket.' Nothing changes, just the players.

Originally posted by Extralien


How the heck do you 'lose' nearly 9 billion?

"Lost" is the new "stolen."

Originally posted by Extralien

How can it be so difficult to retrieve the archived accounting?

It shouldnt be. Contractors have to account for everything. Hours spent down to 15 minute increments. (ie; if you are working on one project with one fund, you can only spend 15 minutes helping someone from another project before you need to start being paid out of their fund)

I suspect "difficult to retrieve" means, we need to shred some stuff and fabricate some new stuff.

Originally posted by Extralien
When will it stop?

When we realize that this isnt about incompetence, but outright, blatant theft. Of US resources, and of resources of these nations we are attacking.

The American people are being robbed by the same economic interests that are looting for oil. But because we are somehow convinced this is all in our benefit, we open up the coffers and throw more money at them.

Good thread, OP.



[edit on 27-7-2010 by Illusionsaregrander]

reply to post by RizeorDie


So now Iraq is just like the US.

Its the same here with our politicians. Only they have to wait til they are out of office to become millionaires and accept their bribes.

We are deeply divided and pretty individually powerless to.

Sounds exactly like the political climate here, only there, the civilians are also being terrorized and murdered with impunity, and they havent started doing that here in the US. Yet.

End the nation-building scam! We had no business being there in the first place and certainly even less business being there now.

Hey Obama - I want my money back!!!

reply to post by Extralien

US 'fails to account' for Iraq reconstruction billions

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money.

So, .... What is it an account is suppose to do again?

I thought it was to "account" for where money went or is!

You WOULD think our government and the Pentagon would be using the best accountants possible to keep track of tax payer money so they could stretch it further.

The accountants, when they are hired should be told from the day they are hired that they are responsible for tracking all the money given to their department and accounting for where every dollar goes and exactly what it was spent on.

If there are discrepancies, they should be told that they would have to report the discrepancies to the U.S. Government Accountability Office as soon as the problem is found.

U.S. Government Accountability Office

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is known as "the investigative arm of Congress" and "the congressional watchdog." GAO supports the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and helps improve the performance and accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

If they fail to do so they should be told that charges would be brought up on them immediately as being complicit or negligent in the disappearance/theft of the money.

Maybe if these accountants are held accountable for the money they are suppose to be keeping track of for the taxpayers and are threatened with prison time if they can't account for the money they are responsible for, maybe, just maybe then we will see less stories like this in the news.

[edit on 7/27/2010 by Keyhole]

same as in the EU...the argentinian lady...marta andreasen...who was the chief financial expert at the EU tried to correct these 'mistakes' and was hounded out of her job..moved...followed home...and then sacked when she refused to sign off the cheques...

shes now a member of UKIP and is fighting the entire system...

we are being robbed.. literally...and anyone who stands in the way is killed (david kelly)..or sacked..terrorized and ridiculed..

[edit on 27-7-2010 by alienesque]

reply to post by RizeorDie


best explanation i heard, there is truth to it, because the British are trying to buy off the Taliban so the Americans probably want to build mini militiamen groups to create some type of stable country but it really looks messed up

and by the way how much is the government right now lost ? last time i heard it was 1 trillion dollars have been lost plus 5 billion and, the Iraqi war every year comes to about 100 billion loads of money

[edit on 27-7-2010 by aspx]

Just another day for the american military industrial complex.

Is this really any surprise? Just days before 911 Donald Rumsfeld did a press conference where he admitted that the pentagon lost track of a few trillion dollars. Thats right, TRILLIONS.

This is how state and federal government works also. They spend and spend and no one keeps track of it even though we pay people to do it.
This is blatant theft and fraud and they dont even have to hide it anymore because they know the population will do nothing. We just complain for a few days and then carry on with our lives and continue to pay our taxes.

If only we could forget the trivial differences between us and band together, these scum would get what they deserve.

This is ironic, because, there you have the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and their own 9 billion dollars go unaccounted for. I mean, considering the sheer size of logistics involved you'd think they'd at least launder some of that money - like the real pro's here in Serbia do.

Where does that money really go? Some back to US, some across the world, some to Saddam Hussein 2.0....

But why do I talk about the embassy, when instead this money was literally "handed" to the military, rather than USAID. Well I guess if you want something to just vanish, military is the man.

This is absolutely appalling! Although not an isolated incident, but a problem that has reached epidemic proportions. Here is another incident that happened on the eve 9-11 and put on the back burner after that massacre. But another massacre took place at around the same time, and financial one.



Out of sight out of mind I guess? Right now Iraqi civilians are living without electricity for much of the day in sweltering heat, being given substandard health care, and made to live in squalid conditions. Then they have a security nightmare presenting itself leading up to the US withdrawal in 2011 and a bunch of inept politicians out for self-interest instead of an interest in the health and welfare of their country.

Parliamentary elections were held in March and was a great accomplishment. However, Parliament has yet to convene and formally conduct business of governance in Iraq. As a matter of fact, the heads of the two feuding sides have only met last month to personally work out differences and months after the elections. As they bicker with one another on whom assumes the position as Prime Minister, their supporters are murdering each other in the streets. Moreover, we have a military who in my humble opinion is trying to secure the country and have no leadership backing their efforts. They have been targeted by terrorist elements and the warring political factions. In that environment, any efforts made by Iraqi Police and the military is futile!

Like many other stories coming out of Iraq, this one will be put at the bottom of the stack. Moreover, the mainstream media will report on it as sparingly as possible as to not interrupt the President's exit strategy. The war will continue for Iraqis long after the final soldier has boarded the C-150 back home to the United States. As a matter of fact, the President has only personally presided over one cabinet meeting in the past year.

Iraq policy is under the domain of Vice President Joe Biden. White House officials say Biden chairs monthly meetings on Iraq in the White House situation room, and that both he and Obama receive regular reports in the president's daily brief, a secret document provided by top officials.

But Obama has not chaired a meeting on Iraq since last year, and according to one prominent Iraqi political figure, many Iraqis are worried that Biden does not have the clout to coordinate U.S. policy.

Iraq's political class complains of what it sees as often flat-footed responses and a newfound aloofness from Washington. "We don't have a feeling for Mr. Obama, honestly. We don't know him," said Mithal Alusi, a lawmaker in the outgoing parliament who has advocated close ties with the U.S.

articles.latimes.com...

It appears the President has shifted much of his attention to America's other conflict Afghanistan, and Iraq is getting a two-bit effort in terms of support. Vice President Biden is running the show now. Iraq is still unfinished as far as I am concerned. Not only were they bombed into oblivion but its seems a robbery took place by the people tasked with seeing them get back on their feet?

If this latest discovery does not receive attention by Congress, followed by in depth hearings, and an invasive audit of every government agency or private firm tasked with handling these funds and Iraq Reconstruction? Then it is just another strike against the people who are supposed deter corruption, and prosecute white collar crime were ever it presents itself. Heads ought to roll for this one!

The Iraqi people are facing a humanitarian crisis and a severe security situation when the US leaves. This is just another insult to the soldiers who fought and died over there and the American taxpayer. It seems quite predominant these days? This sounds like a heist to me and not your regular run-of-the-mill incompetence. Almost every nickle and dime seems to be unaccounted for? Very disparaging development.

[edit on 27-7-2010 by Jakes51]