$8.8 Billion Is Unaccounted For

I have been sitting on this post for a couple of weeks now. This is from an NPR morning program I heard on my way to work one morning. It's art of a two part series on what went wrong with the reconstruction of Iraq.

What caught my attention was Paul Bremer's (the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority) suggestion that it was "naïve to try to impose Western-style accounting practices in Iraq during a war". Right. $12 billion cash was requested and shipped to Iraq. "We have no idea where that money went. Of the $12 billion, $8.8 billion is unaccounted for."

As soon as the Mission Accomplished sign came out, billions of dollars were awared, often sole-source awards to singel companies, such as Haliburton.

"U.S. officials once described reconstruction aid for Iraq as a gift from the American people. But after four years and tens of billions of dollars invested in reconstruction, Iraqis have less electricity, less clean water and fewer jobs than they did before the U.S. invasion."

I wonder what that money would have been used for if we hadn't gotten into this war.