$23 Billion “Lost” In Iraq
According to an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama programme, as much as $23 billion (£12 billion) of US taxpayer’s money has gone missing. The money has been lost, stolen or simply just not accounted for by as many as 70 private US companies.
The BBC reports that the US Justice Department has imposed official gagging orders on court cases against some of the top US companies and that these gagging orders are unlikely to be lifted whilst George W Bush remains as President.
The report quotes US Democrat Henry Waxman, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform as saying:
“The money that’s gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious. “It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.”
The Panorama report, Daylight Robbery, details “allegations of mismanagement, fraud and waste; tales of contractors chosen for their US government connections without a competitive bidding process; contractors inflating their costs and double counting to increase their profits and billions supposed to be used to rebuild the Iraqi military allegedly ending up in the pockets of some Iraqi government officials.
Even the contract to oversee the expenditure went to a company with no relevant qualification in accounting.
“They are the quintessential war profiteers,” said a witness to one of the most notorious companies involved. “They made money out of chaos.”
The total cost of the Iraqi War to the USA so far is estimated to be over $500 billion (£250 billion). According to a US Congressional Budget Office report published in October 2007, the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion dollars by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because the combat is being financed with borrowed money. The CBO estimated that of the $2.4 trillion long-term price tag for the war, about $1.9 trillion of that would be spent on Iraq.
In comparison, the UK has invested around £5 billion ($10 billion) but this was sourced from an existing UK Government fund known as the “Special Reserve”.
To put this scale of expenditure in perspective, in 2005 the leaders of the G8 countries (the US, UK, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia) made now largely forgotten and broken pledges to donate a comparatively modest £25 billion ($50 billion) towards the elimination of poverty in the world’s poorest and most indebted countries…
Written by Christopher Rose · Filed Under Politics
At the start of the post-invasion period the neocon disciples put in charge of reconstruction were literally given container-loads of US dollars with no accountability on how they should use them. Compared to that absurdity the overpayments to contractors and accounting irregularities seem almost reasonable.
In fact, taking that price tag you suggest of $2.4 trillion, a $23 billion loss in unaccounted funds is less than 1/10 of 1%. Wow. That’s extraordinarily low as far as that kind of error goes. Any company has a larger margin for loss built into its bottom line than that.
Makes me want to rewrite this article as a hymn in praise of the efficiency and fiscal responsibility of those running the war, just to irritate the self-righteous.
Dave
The neocons and their containers is another pretty scandalous use of public money, but that doesn’t mean the story I report above is of no interest.
I think it is more informative to compare the $23 billion to the actual spend so far, $500 billion. On that basis, the amount that has disappeared is a much larger 4.6%; it is also 23 BILLION dollars, which is a huge amount of money to have been effectively stolen by corporate participants in the Iraq affair.
I’d certainly rather our country waste no money and never be the victim of fraud, but as frauds go I’d rate the $220 billion per year in medicaid fraud a much higher priority than the less than $3 billion a year which has been lost during the war.
Dave
Waste and fraud seem to be pretty much part of the human condition, Dave, so good luck with your campaign to eliminate either.
I would imagine the large frauds perpetrated by a limited number of actors in Iraq is a far easier matter to address than the more fragmented Medicaid issue.
I googled medicaid and got results that indicate the annual budget over recent years has been between $250 and $300 billion, which makes your assertion of annual fraud of $220 billion a little hard to accept. Where did you get that figure from?
In my estimation, what’s truly been wasteful are the hundreds of billions spent in America since the 1960s on attempting to erase crime and poverty among minorities.
After all that $$ spent, there is still an overwhelming crime and poverty rate in America, especially among blacks.
Blacks comprise 12% of the US population but occupy nearly half of the US prison population.
So where the return on that investment of hundreds of billions?
Have to say, this seems like small fry compared to the figures that have been bandied about recently in connection with the bank rescue packages
Indeed it is, Pete. It is still a lot of money though and seeing this theft effectively covered up by the US government is nauseating.
Hopefully things will change a bit when President-elect Obama takes office in January. He’s all about change, right?
“To put this scale of expenditure in perspective, in 2005 the leaders of the G8 countries … made now largely forgotten and broken pledges to donate a comparatively modest £25 billion ($50 billion) towards the elimination of poverty in the world’s poorest and most indebted countries…”
You deny being a liberal and then make this type of pronouncement?
Your denial of your obvious ideological slant is transparent, Christopher.
Only libs let their hearts bleed for have-nots. Real conservatives say “tough luck, buddy,” to have-nots and believe that have-nots descend to that status because of their own ineptitude and lack of intelligence.