Wednesday, January 31, 2007

From the "Is this supposed to surprise me?" File

WASHINGTON (AP)- The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and a never-used camp for housing police trainers with an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say.

The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion and left the region near civil war.

“The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort,” according to the 579-page report, which was being released Wednesday.

(more)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is why they got rid of the auditors in the first place. If there were no audits there would be no waste!

Problems:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/international/middleeast/25reconstruct.html?ex=1295845200&en=09c6e474654566f9&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
More problems:
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/
And even more problems:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1016-01.htm

Finally a solution:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6114132.stm