http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05298/594296.stmAs the U.S. government continues to throw at least $1 billion a week at the war effort in Iraq, guess how many auditors the Pentagon has to make sure the money gets spent properly.
The answer is none, which should concern taxpayers, who will be footing the bill for many years because the money is all borrowed.
A report by Knight Ridder Newspapers says the Defense Department's inspector general pulled its bean counters out of Iraq a year ago, ironically in a cost-cutting move. Other agencies are watchdogging some aspects of military spending in the war zone, but they don't necessarily report to the public.
Despite valiant efforts by the Bush administration to obfuscate the cost of the war, spending in Iraq already has sailed well past the $200 billion estimate debated during last year's presidential election campaign. That's just for military operations, including repeated controversy over billing practices of a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, which has huge contracts -- many of them unbid -- to assist the military. In addition, irregularities in the spending of $18.4 billion allocated for reconstruction of Iraq have been well-documented.
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