Federal investigators have found that the government has thrown away $10 billion of waste and fraud in Iraq.
The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.
More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.
“There is no accountability,” said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress. “Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable.”
But I’m sure they will be. Bush will probably give them medals. Par for the course.
Can’t our money back but we could send some to Shakes. Much more fulfilling.
You want to talk about fraud waste and abuse, look at social security, welfare and other social programs. $10 billion is a drop in the bucket to those guys. Heck if I paid a broker to invest my social insecurity and he got the rate of return that the government is going to supposedly give me when I retire, I would fire him. Actually, he would probably go to jail because you would have to steal from it to get those types of lousy return.
Change that, I would probably strangle the broker that did that.
BL, you’re moving away from the point. Because social security is a joke does not mean that Kathy’s point is not valid. I have read a fair amount about resource needs in Iraq. A consistent theme I have read is that low to middle level commanders in the field could not get a few hundred or a few thousand bucks to do things that would help them with the Iraqis. Meanwhile, the contractors can’t account for billions. That is scandalous.
In spite of the fact that you changed the subject, I agree with your point philosophically. Only I would say the problem is not the low return, it’s the high return. Those who are receiving benefits now are getting an enormous amount relative to what they put in. Yes, our generation and those following us will pay the piper, so to speak. But those who are collecting now are receiving way more than they “invested.” I don’t want our old people starving. I am fine with social security as a safety net. But it has been turned into an intergenerational wealth transfer that is bankrupting furtue geneations. That is also scandalous. And as much as I have put down your party (I believe appropriately) for demagoguery on the war, there is no question that the Dems are equally demagogic on social security.
Here’s one area that could have used the money.
There is also a big difference when you are trying to distribute gunds between contractors and subcontractors in a war zone vs. in a system that has been in place for 60 years. Now that is scandalous. I am sure people have taken advantage of the system and given that a lot of money was filtered to low level commanders during the initial build up of bases to contract out to local Iraqi’s inexperience with contracting procedures can also lead to waste.
That brings up my point that 10 billion in waste over 4 years of a war and rebuilding process is piddly compared to the trillions in waste and abuse of the programs I mentioned earlier. Yes, Kathy has a point that I am sure money has been wasted, but why does the media and bloggers champion fiscal conservatism when it comes to the military and turn a blind eye when it comes to the corrupt social programs here on our own soil? All those programs amount to is the redistribution of wealth to increase governmental dependance amongst the population and those programs shoudl be audited as well. If there were I would doubt the media would report anything about it anyway.
It all boils down to the overwhelming effort from the left to saturate the media with every possible negative report about the military and war in Iraq with hopes of regaining power to continue the waste in their favored social programs. When was the last time you read a positive report about anything in Iraq or Afghanistan anyway? And don’t tell me they aren’t out there.
What boils down to the “overwhelming effort from the left to saturate the media with every possible negative report about the military and the war”? That this federal investigation was done for that reason? You think they just made it all up to feed the lying leftist media? That’s hysterical. Almost as funny as the theory that Bush/Cheney weren’t part of the CIA leak story. No, wait, that’s moving away from the point in an attempt to deflect attention.
And what IS positive to report out of either place? How we turned our back on Afghan. to instigate a war that is essentially, in a word you seem to enjoy throwing around, corrupt?
Bill, BL always moves away from the point of any post. He really needs his own blog so he can utilize his own agenda instead of taking up space at Kathy’s place blathering on about his own theories on other topics.
And for anyone to imply that whatever “waste” may or may not have occured in either of these wars is justified, simply because you don’t agree with programs the US government provides, is stupid. I bet if you’d agree with any program or service if it benefited you in any way.
When I go to work in the ER tonight and encounter another ill elderly person who asks for us to rewrite prescriptions because they can’t afford the one they have been given, I’ll refer them to BL since he’s such a know it all. Maybe he can tell them how to decide whether to pay their gas bill or buy groceries with that social “insecurity” check that they worked their asses off to receive. Some people can ensure their own financial security and afford to not depend upon aid from others and some people can’t.
Anna,
Don’t disagree with you at all. That’s part of the point I’m making. For me to pay taxes so that an older person that dosen’t have enough to get by is appropriate. But for kids just starting out having to pay more and more in taxes so that I can be more affluent in my retirement like many well off seniors today troubles me greatly. The government granting higher and higher benfefits to older people (regardless of what they paid in or their level of need) only becasue they vote is what offends me.
“There is also a big difference when you are trying to distribute gunds between contractors and subcontractors in a war zone vs. in a system that has been in place for 60 years.”
Why are we distributing teddybears to contractors and subcontractors in a war zone?
That’s teddybears.