![]() |
Madison Ruppert
Two new audits conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction (SIGIR) have discovered that the United States Department
of Defense (DOD) cannot account for a whopping $2 billion it was given
to fund the reconstruction of Iraq.
To make matters even worse, the DOD is not even providing Iraq with a
complete record of the construction projects funded by the United
States, making the accounting even more difficult, if not impossible.
Back in 2004, Iraq provided $3 billion to the DOD to fund selected
construction projects, but only about one third of those funds have been
tracked according to the inspector general’s “January Quarterly Report
and Semiannual Report” which was released recently and can be located here (along with other reports released by the inspector general).
The DOD claims that they have “internal processes and controls” in
place to track the flow of money, yet they admit the “bulk of the
records are missing,” and claim that they are in the process of
searching for them.
Claiming you have internal controls while $2 billion is missing is
laughable and shows just how ludicrously incompetent our government can
be.
However, there is the very real possibility that this has nothing to
do with incompetence and instead is yet another example of individuals
in government conspiring to cash in.
This very well might be the case given that other documents including
monthly reports which document the expenses have mysteriously gone
missing as well.
Another indicator that this is something more than mere incompetence
is the fact that in June of last year, the New York Federal Reserve refused to disclose details about the billions of dollars the Fed sent to Iraq during the beginning of the invasion.
The inspector general claimed it was not the fault of the New York
Fed but instead the Iraqis since “They haven’t been sufficiently
responsive.”
Furthermore, earlier that month it was reported that $6.6 billion in fresh $100 bills was sent by plane to Iraq and then could not be accounted for by the DOD.