Fraud & Theft of More U.S. Billions in Iraq?
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.
Comments
I think this is also an economy related issue. War fatigue might not apply there, because at the same time, people are paying more for their gas or their mortgage. And 8 billions is a lot of tax payer’s money. And it is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Let’s face it, there were also a lot of contracts which were attributed without call for tenders or any proper attribution process. Some of these “tenders” were won by companies with direct links with Republican Administration members, up to the highest level.
Hi, Alphast — certainly it’s an economic issue, in the fact that we’re borrowing the money to pay for this discretionary war.
The media seem uninterested in telling us things of importance and more interested in things that titillate. :-/