Bad investments
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)
As the Solyndra non-story picks up steam in the news media, it might be worth remembering this:
Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn – three times more than the reported $6.6bn.
Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Nujaifi said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week.
“There is a lot of money missing during the first American administration of Iraqi money in the first year of occupation.
“Iraq’s development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations – their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure.
“I think it will be discussed soon. There should be an answer to where has Iraqi money gone.”
And maybe more importantly this:
U.S. taxpayers spent a lot of money on the soldiers, but the Pentagon paid Halliburton to do the work. The company billed the military top dollar knowing that the brass would look the other way. The gravy train finally ground to a halt when two brave members of Congress inquired about the results of the internal audit.
Two, almost none of the money that American taxpayers provided for reconstruction was spent because the rules were too stringent for the CPA’s taste.
And three, we dished out Iraqi money to companies like Halliburton like it was going out of style because the United States government knew that neither Congress nor the United Nations would ask us difficult questions about what we were doing with other people’s money. Equally importantly, Bush officials were worried that the new Iraqi government might ask us difficult questions about their money once they gained any modicum of power. So they were eager to spend the money while they could.
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