Yet Another Fine Mess
Get our your checkbook, folks. A report by a Special Inspector General indicates that billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenue has been "lost" by the Pentagon, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.
Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent.
The US justified taking the money from the Iraqi oil revenue during a period when the Iraqi government was too weak and ineffectual to run a reasonable reconstruction program after we bombed the infrastructure for delivering such necessities as water and electricity into the dust, thereby making the Iraqi government weak and ineffectual. When investigators uncovered fraud and mismanagement of those funds by the Pentagon back in 2003, a new system was put in place to avoid any further problems. Apparently the Pentagon simply ignored the new requirements.
Keep in mind that this wasn't the US taxpayers' money that was pissed away, it was money that belonged to the Iraqi people. They're going to want it back, as well they should. At that point it's going to become US taxpayers' money.
I say we cut the Pentagon's budget by exactly that much. Let them run a bake sale to fund the next weapons system.
The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.
Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent.
The US justified taking the money from the Iraqi oil revenue during a period when the Iraqi government was too weak and ineffectual to run a reasonable reconstruction program after we bombed the infrastructure for delivering such necessities as water and electricity into the dust, thereby making the Iraqi government weak and ineffectual. When investigators uncovered fraud and mismanagement of those funds by the Pentagon back in 2003, a new system was put in place to avoid any further problems. Apparently the Pentagon simply ignored the new requirements.
Keep in mind that this wasn't the US taxpayers' money that was pissed away, it was money that belonged to the Iraqi people. They're going to want it back, as well they should. At that point it's going to become US taxpayers' money.
I say we cut the Pentagon's budget by exactly that much. Let them run a bake sale to fund the next weapons system.
Labels: Corruption, Iraq War, Pentagon
posted by Diane at 3:39 AM
1 Comments:
What if we held a war and nobody came?
War is not healthy for children and other living creatures!
Yes, bake sales for war funding, for all defense funding. A million times yes.
This does not surprise me at all. I heard an Army colonel give a talk about efforts in Iraq to promote friendly relations between American forces and Iraqis. He described cash being kept in the office on open pallets. They would have a meeting with some Iraqi official and just take a stack of money off the pallet and leave the office. No log of the money taken, no receipts, no paper trail. Just millions (billions?) of dollars down rabbit holes.
Yes, the Dept. of Defense should have to have bake sales for their funding.
PurpleGirl
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