A US federal watchdog has criticised the US military for failing to account properly for billions of dollars it received to help rebuild Iraq.The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the US Department of Defence is unable to account properly for 96% of the money.
Out of just over $9bn (£5.8bn), $8.7bn is unaccounted for, the inspector says.
The US military said the funds were not necessarily missing, but that spending records might have been archived.
In a response attached to the report, it said attempting to account for the money might require "significant archival retrieval efforts".
[b]Much of the money came from the sale of Iraqi oil and gas[/b].
I might try the 'records might have been archived' approach when it comes to filling in my tax return.
if you have that much Grum non dom is the way to go ..it is what every patriotic Brit does
Interesting. I recently read this which is linked to the idea of rebuilding money going missing
http://www.chrissimms.info/cut-adrift-main.html
Could you link the source of the original quote?
Presumably it's mostly accounted for [i]somehow[/i], just not adequately. But the sheer amount of cash that it was claimed was sloshing around is probably not a great sign. 🙂
Could you link the source of the original quote?
Erm... if you mean the 'missing' bit that was my own hyperbolic interpretation. 😀
Still, it's only 8.7 billion dollars.
edit: Oh, thanks allthepies - forgot to post the link 😳
I'm not surprised.
I used to work for JPMorgan Chase's Trade Bank of Iraq liaison team and senior officials from the Ministry of Finance would regularly get stopped at the border with Toyota Landcruisers packed to the gills with dollar bills.
The whole thing was utterly chaotic and their executives had a remarkably blase attitude to the millions of dollars that seemed to disappear into administrative black holes.
They knocked out electricity and water to millions of civilians (itself a crime under Geneva Conventions), then had billions upon billions of dollars off the country… and "lost" the money.
Nice.
Add that to over a million dead (estimated, over 100,000 counted), plus attrocities such as the massive increase in infant death and deformity in Falluja, and so-on - all-in-all nice job.
[url= http://www.sigir.mil/directorates/audits/auditReports.html ]The report is the top link on this page, "Development Fund for Iraq: Department of Defense Needs To Improve Financial and Management Controls"[/url]
was in Canada last month and the way the "war" is being reported there is totally different to what we see here on our "news" channels.
Reports then said the US & Canada were witholding further monies due to this problem. News reports showed various stalled projects where money had disappeared
Bit like our own Min Def projects really!!!