US Can't Untangle Billions in Bush-Era Afghan Spending

[unhappycamper]

US Can't Untangle Billions in Bush-Era Afghan Spending
by Marisa Taylor
Published on Thursday, October 28, 2010 by McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government knows it's awarded nearly $18 billion in contracts for rebuilding Afghanistan over the last three years, but it can't account for spending before 2007.

Thousands of firms received wartime contracts, but the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction found it too difficult to untangle how billions of additional dollars had been spent because of the U.S. agencies' poor recordkeeping.

"Navigating the confusing labyrinth of government contracting is difficult, at best," the inspector general says in a report that was released Wednesday.

The finding raises doubts about whether the U.S. government ever will determine whether taxpayers' money was spent wisely in Afghanistan.

"Data got better from 2007 on," said Susan Phalen, a spokeswoman with SIGAR, "but it remains to be seen whether we'll ever know how much U.S. agencies spent overall."

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Smirk." - xCommander AWOL (R)

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Sneer." - xVP Dickie 'Five-Military-Deferments' Cheney (R - RepubliCorp)

[unhappycamper]

5. You should put a graphic warning on that pic. n/t

[Gravel Democrat]

3. kr

[Wednesdays]

4. If I "couldn't account for" just $1000, the IRS would be all over my ass

Probably even for far less than that.
:mad:

[w8liftinglady]

6. How the US lost $12 billion...wait a minute-Iraq...my bad

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"



History repeats itself...or happens simultaneously,in this situation.

[EnlightenedOne]

7. It was the plan, that's what the wars were all about

Money - what else - Bush/Cheney grew the military industrial complex and they all got rich, while American kids died. No big whoop. Just collateral damage to these Republicons. If hundreds of thousands have to die in order for them to get a few billion, well worth the cost. And the fact that there was oil didn't hurt anything either, they made out like bandits on that too.

[WinkyDink]

8. The money is, as was always intended, in private hands, starting with the name "Bush."

[w8liftinglady]

9. the SIGAR website has some interesting data

http://www.sigar.mil/

[w8liftinglady]

10. as Does the SIGIR "hard lessons learned"

http://www.sigir.mil/applyinghardlessons/index.html