Ten Billion Dollars Wasted..

...Depending on Who's Doing the Math

This AP story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer cites federal investigators in claiming $10 BILLION of waste in the Iraq reconstruction effort.

"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.' "

For more details, consult the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Coverage from MSNBC adds another intriguing detail, "Of the $10 billion in overpriced contracts or undocumented costs, more than $2.7 billion were charged by Halliburton Co., the oil-field services firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

To my mind it's much worse than 'just' $10 BILLION wasted. Since nothing has been accomplished in Iraq, if fact the entire foreign policy situation in the Middle East has been made WORSE, far worse by this ill-conceived misadventure, ALL of the money spent has been wasted. How much? This much.


Of course with BushCo™ in charge of things, you could expect that Enron-like accounting is taking place. Losses and liabilities will be passed off to other entities in order to make things look lots better than they are. When nearly all the details are classified, it's even easier to do that. An analysis done over a year ago, and reported in the Boston Globe, tells a more sobering tale;

"The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion after factoring in long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses, according to a new analysis to be presented today in Boston.

The estimate by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes far exceeds projections made by the Bush administration.

The figure is more than four times what the war was expected to cost through 2006 -- around $500 billion, according to congressional budget data."

YOU do the math. Or would you rather leave it to this fool?

TAGS: Iraq War, Corruption, War-Mongering
Federal Budget, Innumeracy

Hand In Hand

The Toxic Mixture of Corruption and Secrecy

This Story in the Washington Post had me rushing to update The Growing GOP List of Shame this morning - the putrid fallout of the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal now landing on former CIA official Kyle 'Dusty' Foggo and Brent Wilkes, a California defense contractor bloody-handed war profiteer. It is an old familiar story with the GOP, the best government money can buy being bought and paid for at the taxpayers' expense - dirty business as usual, with the sordid 'hookergate' aspect of it thrown in for good measure.

"The CIA's former executive director and a defense contractor were indicted yesterday by a San Diego grand jury for allegedly corrupting the intelligence agency's contracts, marking one of the first criminal cases to reach into the CIA's clandestine operations in Europe and the Middle East.. ..The 11-count indictment states that Wilkes subsidized meals and lavish vacations for Foggo and his family in Washington, Hawaii and Scotland and promised to employ Foggo after his retirement from the CIA. It also accuses Foggo -- a former ethics official in two divisions at the CIA -- of improperly providing classified information to Wilkes about the CIA, his contracting competitors and 'other matters.'.. ..Last year the probe led to a prison sentence for one lawmaker, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- who, the government said yesterday, used two prostitutes financed by Wilkes."

There is one aspect of this case that I would like to highlight, reported on but not given enough weight by the Washington Post, in my opinion.

"The case involving Foggo is unusual because all of the contracts at issue are classified. But the indictment makes it clear that the agency was allegedly bilked when it wound up paying 60 percent more than it should have for water supplied by a company affiliated with Wilkes to CIA outposts in Afghanistan and northern Iraq."

This is very disturbing when you consider the pervasive and shadowy, unaccountable power of the Military Industrial Complex in the USA. Apparently, the perpetraitors (spelling deliberate) thought the classification would act as a shield to hide their crimes. The Bush administration is of course the most secretive in US history, and we must attribute much of that to cover-up for crime rather than legitimate national security. As testimony in the Libby trial revealed, Dick Cheney even had his own illegal system of classifying documents!! I mentioned this in a different context a few posts back, but it bears repeating here.

A couple more points - in Crooks and Liars' piece on this matter yesterday, Nicole Belle makes note of the fact that the federal prosecutors outrage (Assault on Justice-Les Enragés, Jan. 20) connects to this case. "Alberto Gonzalez went out of his way to try to derail this." And Down With Tyranny describes Foggo as "Bush's eyes and ears (and grabby hands) inside the CIA– he was a political operative and hack." So, seeing as how Foggo is well connected to the BushCo™ power grid, and possibly being protected by personages as high up as the Attorney General, this can't be seen as a small-time one-off incident. It is more likely the tip of a very large iceberg of corruption. But, shhhhh... ... it's a secret.

Secrecy and corruption go hand in hand. It certainly has helped the Military Industrial Complex's bottom line, at the expense of the rest of the country.

Crossposted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: Kyle Foggo, Brent Wilkes, Corruption, War Profiteering

Rogue Nation

U.S. Declines to Join Accord on Secret Detentions

OUTRAGE OVERLOAD - It's hard to know where to begin. At the same time, how can one begin knowing that there is no end to the list of crimes being committed by your government with your tax dollars. Come to think of it, because of the huge deficit, your children's and grandchildren's taxes will still be paying for GOP policies under the Bush/Cheney regime.

Let's start with this Washington Post article. The US, along with Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy, refused to endorse an agreement obviously aimed at the American government's practice known euphemistically as rendition. I insist on calling it kidnapping. Whatever you call it, the Bush administration still wants to preserve their 'right' to do wrong, in the face of international law and common decency.

"PARIS, Feb. 6 -- Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the treaty was 'a message to all modern-day authorities committed to the fight against terrorism' that some practices are 'not acceptable.' ...The Associated Press reported that [ State Department spokesman Sean ] McCormack declined to comment on whether the U.S. stance was influenced by the Bush administration's policy of sending terrorism suspects to CIA-run prisons overseas, which President Bush acknowledged in September."

Meanwhile as the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq passes 3,100, Paul Bremer is coming under intense pressure from Henry Waxman in Congressional hearings for his lack of control over billions of dollars sent to Iraq to 'kick start' the economy. Truckloads of hundred dollar bills have gone missing. Charges have been laid against five individuals for illegally diverting over 8 million dollars in funds allocated to rebuilding Iraq. Among those five, three high-ranking US military officers. Still, this accounts for the merest drop in the 12 BILLION dollars that has gone missing due to the absence of any accounting techniques to keep track of it. It's looking more and more as if the real reason for invading Iraq was to make some GOP supporters filthy rich. It's getting me pissed off. Really steaming.

So, now that it is painfully obvious that the Bush administration is little more than a very sophisticated criminal enterprise, what is being done? Due to Republican resistance, the Democrats can't even debate the war in the Senate. Seems their slim majority has been taken away from them by Tim Johnson's illness and Joe Lieberman's...well, Joe LIEberman. Period. The disdain the GOP show for even the appearance of democratic process is staggering.

It would seem that the rule of law has simply ceased to exist in the United States of America. An Italian judge has ordered a US soldier to face trial over the 2005 death of Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent in a car at a checkpoint in Baghdad - but it seems unlikely that US authorities will co-operate. "He will probably be tried in absentia as he has been cleared in the US." (BBC news)

The administration supports the troops when they are killing foreigners for no good reason, or participating in an illegal war, but what about those like Lt. Ehren Watada, who refuse to follow orders that they feel are illegal? Watada's Court Martial started Monday with the presiding Judge, John Head (whose first and last names, BTW happen to be synonyms for 'toilet') ruling that Watada could not examine the Iraq war's legality in his defense.

"[Watada's defense attorney Eric] Seitz has unsuccessfully sought an opportunity to argue the legality of the war, saying it violated Army regulations that specify wars are to be waged in accordance with the United Nations charter.

Their final attempt was quashed following a hearing last month in which military judge Lt. Col. John Head ruled Watada cannot base his defense on the war's legality. He also refused claims that Watada's statements were protected by the First Amendment, saying that would be up to a military panel."

So, long story short - secure in their control of the White House, Senate, and Supreme Court, the Republican party continues to move towards a legal system where guilt or innocence is determined by how meticulously one agrees with the Codpiece in Thief. In doing so, they are also making America into an international pariah. It makes me so mad.

TAGS: War Crimes, Injustice, Police State, Doomsday