Tens of Millions Wasted in Iraq
The latest report from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction says tens of millions of dollars have been wasted because of failure and fraud. Among other abuses, the report cites a never-used $48.3-million housing facility, complete with an Olympic-size swimming pool. If Willie Sutton were alive today, he'd head straight to Baghdad.
The latest report from the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction says tens of millions of dollars have been wasted because of failure and fraud. Among other abuses, the report cites a never-used $48.3-million housing facility, complete with an Olympic-size swimming pool. If Willie Sutton were alive today, he’d head straight to Baghdad.
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The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and a never-used camp for housing police trainers with an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.
The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left the region near civil war.
“The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort,” according to the 579-page report, which was being released Wednesday.
Calling Iraq’s sectarian violence the greatest challenge, Bowen said in a telephone interview that billions in U.S. aid spent on strengthening security has had limited effect. Reconstruction now will fall largely on Iraqis to manage — and they’re nowhere ready for the task.
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At an Israeli air force base not far from Tel Aviv, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will supervise construction of a $100 million five-floor underground facility for the Israel Defense Forces termed “Site 911,” and no one in the press, including The Washington Post's national security reporter, seems to know its precise purpose.
Moqtada al-Sadr is back, issuing an ultimatum to American troops and contractors: Leave Iraq by the end of the year or he will revive his Mehdi Army and relaunch attacks on the United States' post-withdrawal presence in the country.
In your face, foreign community! Afghan President Hamid Karzai has begun dissolving foreign private security companies, including the firm formerly known as Blackwater, as he moves to make good on a promise to ban the private contractors by year's end.
With the last American combat brigade pulling out of Iraq this week, the U.S. is turning much of the security effort there over to a small army of civilian contractors under the State Department.
The U.S. military, despite reports to the contrary, has continued to rely on a secret private spy network, akin to a Blackwater with brains, that has provided a stream of intelligence to military forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than a year.
There are now more civilian contractors in Afghanistan than U.S. soldiers. Using civilian contractors to haul food, prepare meals and act as bodyguards has kept the Pentagon's official casualty figures lower than they would have been in past conflicts, where contractors were not as heavily used.
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