Fraud & Theft of More U.S. Billions in Iraq?

A Pentagon audit reveals that we have spent $8.2 billion in Iraq on "commercial and miscellaneous payments," according to Deborah White. In other words, a really really large petty-cash fund, even though this is a drop-in-the bucket of the entire budget for the Iraq war.

This audit is the latest in a series of reports of waste and mismanagement in George Bush's discretionary war. And a reminder, the Republican Congress in early 2006 proposed moving billions out of the review of the Special Inspector General (SIG) for Iraqi reconstruction, which at that time had 72 open investigations into alleged fraud and corruption. Later in 2006, the Republican Congress planned to kill the office of the SIG, a decision reversed after November elections. Then in April this year, the SIG reported more than $107 billion contracts had been marked "complete" even if they were stopped prior to completion.

Americans, however, have war fatigue -- at least our media do. The NY Times reported over the weekend that "coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September."

Outta sight, outta mind? I don't think so.