Official Study: US Wasted Billions in Iraq, Afghanistan
Report Estimates $12 Billion Lost to Fraud Alone
Fraud, waste and general corruption have cost the US tens of billions of dollars between Iraq an Afghanistan, according to the new Commission on Wartime Contracting report released today.
The report says that “criminal behavior and blatant corruption” were directly responsible for much of the waste in the nearly $200 billion spent in “reconstruction” projects over the two nations since 2002.
It was unable to provide an exact figure for how much was lost, but estimated the loss just to overt fraud to be $12 billion. The report cited the use of contractors for inappropriate projects as a major source of such corruption.
The report built on a previous report by ousted Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Arnold Fields, which revealed that there was virtually no oversight in place over the various projects.
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bogi666
February 25th, 2011 at 12:46 am
This is an understatement, auditing in foreign countries with secret banking laws and different languages is simply no possible. Besides $9 billion was missing since 2003, it can't be accounted for and is even known and still can't be accounted for. It cost more than $12 billion to create Dubai.
curmudgeonvt
February 25th, 2011 at 7:22 am
No SHIT!?!?! It took a committee to figure this out??!! And how much did the USG spend on this committee to come to this bit of enlightenment? Give me a break. JHChrist. Even someone who hasn't been paying attention could have figured this out. Why don't they create a committee (I can't believe I said that…) to figure out and publish whether or not there has been any GOOD to come out of these invasions and occupations. Seems that might be a little more relevant to the question of continuing the wars in these times of financial disasters, eh?
bogi666
February 25th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
The purpose of these slaughters is graft and corruption. The Pentagon provides the perfect vehicle for it. The USG is so corrupt and dysfunctional that graft and corruption is funded by the national debt, so it's graft and corruption plus interest, truly an USG invention,. Even the corruption of the USSR wasn't so dysfunctional, it didn't pay interest on the graft and corruption there. Even Al Capone ran his graft and corruption on a cash basis.
River Rat
February 25th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
I'm so sick and tired of this son of a bitch getting up in front of the public and saying how he's going to change everything and have more job's, better schools,and to think this lying bastard thinks we still beleave his Communist Muslim crap. I'm telling you now, him and his Nazi's have to go.