Billions of U.S. tax dollars wasted in Iraq

February 16, 2007 Bush Era, Impeachment News 2

Associated Press

Feb 16, 2007

About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

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.”

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2 Comments

  1. What an excellent quotation and what a perfect metaphor: the dinosaur stuck in the tar pit whose bones have become the ‘fossil fuels’ that are the reason we are over there again.

    This beleaguered American taxpayer is most definitely NOT happy to have taken on this boondoggle where my hard-earned money are being siphoned off to Blackwater, Brown & Root and other Halliburton/CheneyCorp. companies at the expense of thousand of precious American lives and hundreds of thousands of largely innocent Iraqis.

    What will it take for America to fully awaken and call these bastards to account for their crimes?

  2. “From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit – we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on.”
    – Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, “It Doesn’t Take a Hero.”

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