On the bright side, the value of Cheney's severance package from Halliburton went up considerably and companies like Blackwater and Bechtel did pretty good, too. And auditors can't even figure out how much was spent!
Members of the military used to build whatever the military needed or wanted in war zones.
Then, we abolished the draft, which made wars even more profitable than ever for the private sector, created an essentially right-wing military and dramatically decreased the size and visibility of the peace movement. IOW, the right converted the war protests of the left into a neocon wet dream.
Now, the "left" has joined the right in glorifying the military, no matter what, and vilifying and/or minimizing the peace movement. And we call that progressive.
Jul 14, 3:50 AM EDT
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work
By ROBERT BURNS
AP National Security Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much.
In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.
"The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known," the report said.
The auditors found huge problems accounting for the huge sums, but one small example of failure stood out: A contractor got away with charging $80 for a pipe fitting that its competitor was selling for $1.41. Why? The company's billing documents were reviewed sloppily by U.S. contracting officers or were not reviewed at all.
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