Iraq Reconstruction Audit Details Contract Failures

On Sunday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) reported that contracts have been marked "complete" even when they were stopped prior to completion and that many "were ended specifically because of the contractors' actual or anticipated poor performance." The cost to date? More than $107 billion.

AP reports that SIGIR investigators "were also looking into whether contractors whose projects were terminated by the U.S. government due to inadequate performance might have been awarded new contracts later despite their poor records." A noble cause, that one, although it's doubtful any audit will actually result in changed practice:

Last year, congressional investigators said as much as $10 billion - or one in six dollars - charged by U.S. contractors for Iraq reconstruction were questionable or unsupported, and warned that significantly more taxpayer money was at risk.

For those who may have forgotten, the SIGIR was almost scuttled in 2006: a Republican Congress acting at the request of a Republican President. Termination was quietly overturned after the 2006 election.

The SIGIR makes regular reports to Congress on how Iraq reconstruction funds are spent and is the successor to the Coalition Provisional Authority Office of Inspector General (CPA-IG). SIGIR was created in October 2004 by a congressional amendment to Public Law 108-106 (55KB PDF), triggered by the June 28, 2004 dissolution of the CPA.

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