Hey Paul, Where's the $9 Billion?

An audit by a U.S. inspector says the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority that governed Iraq after the 2003 invasion failed to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to Iraqi ministries. The audit released Sunday by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says the Coalition Provisional Authority failed to establish control systems to verify how the money was spent, which opened it to corruption.

In some instances, money was used to pay what the report calls "ghost" employees, explaining that out of 8,206 guards on the payroll at one ministry, only 602 could be accounted for. In a written response included in the report, the former chief of the occupation authority, L. Paul Bremer III, strongly disputed its conclusions. He said the inspectors had seemed to assume that "Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war." Mr. Bremer says delaying payment to Iraqi public servants could have created additional security threats.

So let's see, $200+ billion already spent on the war. The neo-cons originally proposed that the U.S. would only spend about $5 billion and that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the cost of the war. Well that wasn't true. Just like WMD was not true. And now Bush wants $80 billion more and says that troops will be there through 2006. Well, where is the money going? Into the pockets of Bremer the con and Allawi the stooge? Maybe its all going to Halliburton and Bechtel. Little money is going to reconstruction or troop training. This is your tax dollars at work. Iraq, the final frontier.