The Chief auditor for the Iraq Reconstruction revealed this week that $ 8 of the $21 Billion that Congress appropriated to help rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq can not be located or accounted for by the Bush Administration. At the same time a police academy that was built in Baghdad for $78 Million is so defective much of the building can not be used and must be torn down. Halliburton was awarded NO BID contracts at a time when they were being investigated for gross overcharging the government for earlier contracts. Contracts for the most part were only awarded to owners that were Republican.
The number and size of the fraud and unaccounted for dollars under the Bush administration in Iraq is beyond belief. Despite the release of this information by the chief auditor, we see NO MOVE by Congress to look into these contracts. In one of my other Blogs one of the Bush zombies said that nothing Bush has done harmed the blogger. My answer was he was too stupid to realize just how Bush has harmed him and most other Americans. Here is a specific example.
That $8 Billion dollars that has disappeared if used to rebuild homes for Gulf victims at $200,000 per home would have provided 40,000 new homes. The entire issue of civilian contactors in Iraq is a fraud and has cost the American Tax payers Billions. I cover this issue in my book and below is an excerpt on this issue:
From George W. Bush Robin Hood For The Rich by Colonel Gene P. Abel
The policy of contracting combat support and combat service support functions to private contractors needs to be eliminated. This concept was intended to increase the level of combat forces available without increasing the overall end strength of the military.
Two problems have been documented from this policy. First, the salaries private contractors need to pay are substantially higher then we pay our military in order to attract the civilians to work in a combat zone. One example is that truck drivers in Iraq were receiving as much as $80,000 per year in salary which was far greater than the equivalent salary we were paying to military truck drivers. Add the overhead and profit for the private companies and the cost of providing combat support and combat service support functions via private contractors in a combat zone is actually greater than by just employing more military.
The second issue is that when the civilian contractors come under attack in a combat operation, they are unable to defend themselves and require the active military to divert resources in order to protect them. This is essential not only from a humanitarian standpoint but to also protect the services that they are providing such as logistics or food preparation.
Therefore the concept of contracting military support functions to private contractors has both increased our costs and created operational problems in the area of combat when these units come under attack by the enemy.
EVERY DAY new information about the failure of the Bush Administration comes to light. In most cases, these SAME issues are covered in my book!