Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Billions Of Dollars Lost In Iraq By DOD


I posted a couple of weeks ago about how the United States is funding massive corruption in Afghanistan. Hundreds of millions of dollars is going to buy homes in Dubai for Afghani leaders and their friends and families, and millions more are going into their own bank accounts. In fact the corruption is so massive that the U.S. can't keep up with where all the money is going.

Some might think that Afghanistan is a special case, and things are different in Iraq. I wish that was the case, but it's not. It seems that billions of dollars have disappeared in Iraq also, and nobody has a clue where it has gone. I'm guessing that money has also gone to feed the corruption of the puppets we placed in leadership positions in that country (just like in Afghanistan).

The U.S. Department of Defense was given $9.1 billion in funds (supposedly from the Iraqi oil money) that was supposed to be used for the reconstruction effort in Iraq. How much of that money actually went into the reconstruction of Iraq? That's the problem -- nobody knows. On Monday the Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released a report about how the money was spent.

SIGIR says that out of the $9.1 billion about 96% of it is unaccounted for (about $8.7 billion). The federal watchdog says the military cannot account for where the billions of dollars have gone, and "a lack of proper accounting makes it impossible to say exactly what happened to most of the money." I've heard of bad accounting procedures before, but to lose 96% of the money given them has to be some kind of record for incompetence.

We are leaving Iraq more corrupt and in much worse shape than it was when we started the illegal invasion and occupation of that country. In addition, the recently released documents show we are losing the war in Afghanistan and creating new enemies there every day by our attacks on the civilian population there. Why do we continue these two ridiculous losing propositions?

Isn't it time to stop sacrificing our soldiers in these Vietnam-like travesties? Isn't it time to withdraw our troops and bring them home?

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