Billions of Dollars Likely Wasted in Iraq Reconstruction

Fraud and incompetence on a devastating scale

What happened to the $51 billion America spent rebuilding Iraq? The final audit, released today, says that we'll never fully know, but it's likely that billions were wasted.

One telling failure stood out from the report: the military paid $80 apiece for pipes that could have been bought for $1.41 each. How could something like that happen? Billing documents often weren't reviewed properly, or at all, because of staff shortages.

In addition to compiling the report, the auditors pursued criminal cases against individuals involved in abusing the reconstruction funds, leading to 87 indictments and 71 convictions for bribery, fraud, embezzlement, and theft of government funds.

In other bad-for-the-US news, Iraq is now buddying up with Iran, according to the Huffington Post. Once deadly rivals, since the war the two countries have become allies.

Via the AP.

What should have been done to prevent fraud and waste on this scale?

[Thunderchicken]

Yeah, lets let the government run health care. Smaller government is the solution to many of this country's problems.

[dances-weebles]

if the money had been kept at home to begin with, then there'd be ample money for full, free medical care for everyone on u.s. soil. the iraq war was a scam.

[Thunderchicken]

dances-weebles
!
if the money had been kept at home to begin with, then there'd be ample money for full, free medical care for everyone on u.s. soil.
Only if you ignore our $16,000,000,000.00 debt.(Ever hear the expression: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.)

the iraq war was a scam.
Only if you ignore the fact the we sold Iraq the makings for the WMDs.(I'll agree with anyone who says that was a dumb move.)

But I guess when you have "Hope and Change" you can ignore reason and fact.(And this country is the worse for it.)

[Thunderchicken]

Oops;

$16,000,000,000,000.00 (Damb, I don't have enough fingers and toes.)

[MzPollytics]

So true!

[Bobolinsky]

I coulda told ya when Bush was standing in front of the "Mission Accomplished" sign that "nation-building" wouldn't work.

And let's not forget what a wonderful symbolic target all those over-priced improvements make for the Sunnis and Shias who are engaged in a religious civil war.

To my knowledge, "nation-building" has exactly one example of success. Japan. The rest were a waste of US tax dollars.

[FollowTheMoney]

Japan worked because we beet them in to submission first. We've yet to do that in the middle east.

[Bobolinsky]

You might be right. I chalk it up to Japanese culture. There is something about both Japan and Germany... I can't put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with honor and respect for what it means to be Japanese or German. I hesitate to call it "nationalism" because it's more than just what the Left describes it as.

Honest socialism seems to work better in Germany than in France or Italy. Japan is similar in the national pride they take in their collective success.

Japan and Germany have very different histories but they seem to have arrived at a similar place. Japan has a long history as one nation that is in isolation and detente if not always friendship with the super power which was China. Germany's is one of city-states and conflict right up into the 19th C.

Regardless, Japan and Germany are the exceptions. Socialism is a disaster everywhere else.

[Thunderchicken]

There is something about both Japan and Germany... I can't put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with honor and respect for what it means to be Japanese or German. I hesitate to call it "nationalism" because it's more than just what the Left describes it as.

Hitler saw that too. In pitching the WW2 alliance he referenced the similarities between Bushido (Samuria phylosephy) and the Teutonic Knights Code.

[Bobolinsky]

That might be what he called it and in the case of Japan, Bushido, may be an accurate name. At least in the abstract approximation of "chivalry".

The Teutonic Knights and Bushido may have worked for Hitler, but I'm not talking about anything concrete.The same thing that enabled Hitler and Hirohito to do what they did also enabled what came after Hitler and Hirohito were defeated.

[BigD1391]

You ever watch "no end in sight"?

[autiger]

You dont have to go to Iraq to see Government waist.. Look at the money that is waisted on "Green Energy".

[Fishbone345]

Or on the many many overpriced items spent in the Defense Budget the Contractors overcharge to suck at the government teat.

[autiger]

Your little "snipe" at the Defense Budget is understandable from the Liberal point of view.. But you can't name one success / company in Green Energy.. where the Govt. gave money .. Just one.. One success of the military is somewhere at the bottom of the Ocean(bin lauden) & no one will argue .. the world is safer because of it..

[Fishbone345]

No, my little snipe is at companies that are like vultures. And the Defense budget is huge for a reason.
It had nothing to do with Liberal or Conservative viewpoints.
I was in the military and I purchased items and always wondered how they got away with overpricing. There is a ton of money spent and making certain people billionaires that could be helping our deficit.

[autiger]

Oh ok.. A lot of people that deal w/ government are just crooks.. Easiest money to steal is govts. They have an article in the B'ham news this morning.. 10-15 prominent govt. leaders from just Birminghsm who are in prison.. It's a a lot of them. The story is about their "prison life". Wish I had an answer for the Defense stuff.. Our military deserves better .. Sorry misunderstood you.. I'll do better .. But I do LOVE our military.. Touchy subject w/me

[Fishbone345]

I love our military too, I served in it proudly and would do so again in a heartbeat.
I wish more of that huge budget was going to our troops instead of the bottom feeders at Haliburton, or Hewlett-Packard for example.
When I heard Donald Rumsfield respond to troops asking about getting helmets to replace the ones they had that were falling apart by saying basically "to suck it up"? I wanted to tear the man apart!!!
I love our troops. I believe in keeping them safe.

[Jack-Black]

I am just glad that the US Navy is not wasting any money on their fuel. 26 bucks a gallon is a steal. Glad "Green" energy is saving green just like Solyndra and other stimulus money recipients. Thank God for Change so we can all have Hope.

[ACTSmom]

I don't understand why we go into countries, spend billions to bomb and destroy the he!! out of it, then turn around and spend billions more rebuilding! That's one of the most illogical facets of our military. Guess we've been doing it for decades but it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Meanwhile, fraud and waste have been going on in DOD expenditures for ages. Remember those $60 hammers and ridiculously priced toilet seats from eons ago? The only way things like this happen is from within. So go up the line and start firing those responsible for the contracts and fire those responsible for the people responsible for the contracts. Pretty soon the current crop of DOD would be dismantled a new bunch running things. Hopefully they'd be a bit more honest if they knew they COULD lose their lucrative job. They're wayyyy too comfortable in their positions.

[Fishbone345]

Who do you think is charging for those hammers and toilets? Don't fire the poor little military purchasers for doing as they are told by congress.
You want to fix the problem? Look no further than Lockheed Martin, Boeing, IBM, General Electric and Unisys just to name a few.
It's not our military members that are to blame, unless you go up a ways like to the Pentagon. They are told whom to purchase from and given money to do so. They more often than not have no choice in the matter. The money they are given, tax money? That is a must spend. You can't have anything left in the coffers at the end of the year or spending on the budget will be decreased. Purchasers aren't encouraged to save.
See the problem yet? Most Americans don't want to or choose to ignore it.
There are people making billions off of that Defense Budget and they encourage those with the ability to choose who to shop from with hard cash. If you think those billions are being spent on the troops other than the basics? You'd be wrong.

[ACTSmom]

Did I say fire the little guys? No...I said "fire those responsible for the contracts" and then fire those "responsible for the people responsible for the contracts"...I don't care if it goes all the way to congress or the president or if it stays in DOD where the Sec. of Defense should be ousted.

[Fishbone345]

Noticed you didn't say anything about the contractors themselves. Heh

[ACTSmom]

It's the responsibility of those who put out the bid and approves the bid to make sure they're being charged appropriately. If they are not doing that, then they're incompetent. If a contractor has submitted a bid wherein the cost of a buck-fifty pipe is has a price tag of $100, then whose fault is that? Not the contractor...unless he's hiding those costs. All contractors make money on supplies and equipment, usually 100%. I still say it's the fault of whomever approves the bid if the contractor supplies everything.

[Fishbone345]

And I say you are incredibly naive to think that the two aren't in bed with one another.

[dances-weebles]

this is old news. if you'd like to find the money, then take a look in cheney's pockets.

[Wilberhum]

You can't help people who don't want help.
Iraq has always been Sunni murdering Shiite, except when Shiite are murdering Sunni.
Not only have we lost the Billions of Tax Dollars Wasted in Iraq Reconstruction, it has cost us victory in Afghanistan.
The invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, was one of the dumbest, most misguided mistakes a president has ever made.
The only good news is we got the man that tried to assassinate George H Bush.
4,000+ of our troops who died, 100,000+ Iraqis who died,$3 trillion wasted, such a deal.

[dances-weebles]

believe it or not i sort of agree with you here. the last and most telling statement that g.w. made before the bombs began falling was when he was actually crying in front of the cameras saying,'but saddam tried to kill my daddy!'

well, there were a whole lot of people during ww 2 who were trying to kill my daddy, but that doesn't mean that i want to bomb the shit out of them and murder their rightful ruler.

[Fishbone345]

Anytime one of our Presidents is the target of an assassination attempt we should be concerned. I don't care what platform he stands on, he's a fellow American and one of the things I swore when entering the military was to protect all. Not just those that believed the way I do. How can you be so callous about a life like that? For shame.
I agree that Iraq was a huge blunder, but wishing people dead goes against everything the military stands for. They kill and sacrifice their life and they don't do it lightly.

[Fishbone345]

And rightful ruler? Look Iraq was a bad idea. Bush Senior head to make a hard decision to leave a horrible man in power so that the stability of the reion wouldn't be compromised. Something his son didn't do.
But saying Sadam was a rightful ruler is just laughable. The man was horrible and put people to death without thought. You saw how the people treated that "rightful ruler" with cellphone footage when he was captured. He got what he deserved, I just hate that it laid waste to a country and killed our boys in the process and created such instability in the area.
The reason we supported him the first time was to oppose Iran. Remember?

[Wilberhum]

'Anytime one of our Presidents is the target of an assassination attempt we should be concerned'. But causing the death of, by some estimates, over half a million people is not the way to show concern.
'How can I be so callous about a life like that?
WTF, I address the horror of all those who have died. Do you have comprehension problems.
"wishing people dead goes against everything the military stands for"?
Where did that come from?
I have total respect and thanks for those who server and protect our county. My disrespect is for those who caused them to sacrifice their life.

[Fishbone345]

We agree on most points save thinking the assassination plan was a good thing. Bush Senior did things right. He removed Iraqs ability to oppress, left leadership in place so there wasn't a vacuum and he brought our boys back home. He made a damn tough choice to do so. Incurring the dislike of his own party. I think he did a good job.
His son? Not so much. Not at all. Complete disaster. Totally agree.

[blacklist88]

Not going to war with iraq.

[ir0nw0lfe]

Bomb it and leave.

[Truthinesss]

Not rebuilding...duh

[marine1]

As abnormal as it may seem for these people, they ALL should have taken their heads out of their asses and tried to be responsible adults for once in their life????????

[Keyjo]

Overcharging by military contractors is nothing new. I'm not sure when it started, but I'm suspecting it escalated sometime after the days of Rosie the Riveter.
I do think the nation reached an all time pathetic low when a sitting vice president started a war purposefully to profit from the blood of both our enemies AND our own troops.
If Eisenhower was alive today, he'd beat Chaney down and charge him with treason. The nation ignored the warning Ike gave his when he left the White House and we're so much worse for it.

[BigD1391]

It's benefits to the wealthy, tax cuts for the rich, and greedy contractors that rape our nations and drive it into debt. Many of that stuff could have been handled by the military. And all that money given to reconstruction, by the government, went into the pockets of a few. Taxpayers always get screwed by greedy a-holes. We destroyed their country (Iraq) because we lost our supply of oil from the south (Latin America). There is multiple ways to look at this but we pissed off alot of people in the middle east and hopefully there is no blowback from what was done and because of what wasn't done (reconstruction). And Good recognition of Ike. He was the only Republican President of the 20th or 21st century that was any good.

[Keyjo]

Yes, the G.O.P. is a shell of the party it was once. The likes of Eisenhower, Goldwater, even Nixon, would not recognize and would have nothing to do with today's Republicans.

[desertstorm]

I found an interesting article from about the truth in Iraq:
for every tragic car bomb that kills a dozen Iraqis (and every death is a horrible tragedy) there are 24, 999,995 Iraqis who are having a relatively good day.

Getting married, starting new, higher paying jobs,
getting information from outside their country for the first time.
buying appliances they could not afford previously.
traveling to viist relatives outside their hometown for the first time.
practicing their religion as they choose, rather than how Saddam decrees.

98% of children are now vaccinated against polio....
10,500 schools built or refurbished... over 20 million textbooks...
25,000 new members of Iraqi Special Police Forces....
30,000 new Iraqi border agents....
53,000 new businesses....
15 million cell phone users....
Now 35% of Parliment consists of women...
practicing their religion as they choose, rather than how Saddam decrees

how long did it take to rebuild Europe?
Huffington Post? about as reliable as the AP. take with grain of salt.

[Bobolinsky]

All that happened while our troops were there "enforcing the peace". Now that we are just about out of there, civil war has broken out. I'm just afraid that all or most of those things you mention are temporary.

[DerivePI]

Performance design and competition. Ex. we need a waterline installed from point A to B with these additional requirements. Please provide proposal (a minimum of 3 proposals required from competing contractors).

[CanadianIndy]

Government wasting money? Who'da thunk it?

[Chomsky0]

If you were a mega Corporation helping bomb and "rebuild" Iraq you wouldn't think the American government was wasting money.

[Diagnosis]

The "lost" money is obvious in the pockets of those who sponsered the war. Anyway, what makes you think the U.S. actually wants to save Irak? They don't. They wanted it destroyed and that's exactly what they did.

[IMAQT]

The total cost of the Iraq war was close to one trillion dollars. The cost of lives is in the thousands and thousands more will be suffering their injuries for the rest of their lives. U.S. forces formally ended their nine-year war in Iraq with a low-key flag ceremony in Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani were invited to the ceremony but did not attend. Yes it seems like the Iraqis were very thankful for all of our sacrifices. Billions of dollars wasted is a real understatement.

[Chomsky0]

Umm, not be in Iraq in the first place. Not destroy their country. America has a long history or destroying countries then sending in our Corporations to make money.