We Got Scammed $30-60 Billion by Government Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

[ErikJ]

http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/16/we-got-scammed-by-government-contractors-in-iraq-and-afghanistan/

Let’s begin with the $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills, Iraqi oil money held in the US. The Bush administration began flying it into Baghdad on C-130s soon after US troops entered that city in April 2003. Essentially dumped into the void that had once been the Iraqi state, at least $1.2 to $1.6 billion of it was stolen and ended up years later in a mysterious bunker in Lebanon. And that’s just what happened as the starting gun went off.

It’s never ended. In 2011, the final report of the congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting estimated that somewhere between $31 billion and $60 billion taxpayer dollars had been lost to fraud and waste in the American “reconstruction” of Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, for instance, there was that $75 million police academy, initially hailed “as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security.” It was, however, so poorly constructed that it proved a health hazard. In 2006, “feces and urine rained from the ceilings in [its] student barracks” and that was only the beginning of its problems.

In June 2014, after whole divisions of the Iraqi army collapsed and fled before modest numbers of Islamic State militants, abandoning much of their weaponry and equipment, it became clear that they had been significantly smaller in reality than on paper. And no wonder, as that army had enlisted 50,000 “ghost soldiers” (who existed only on paper and whose salaries were lining the pockets of commanders and others). In Afghanistan, the US is still evidently helping to pay for similarly stunning numbers of phantom personnel, though no specific figures are available. (In 2009, an estimated more than 25 percent of the police force consisted of such ghosts.) As John Sopko, the US inspector general for Afghanistan, warned last June: “We are paying a lot of money for ghosts in Afghanistan… whether they are ghost teachers, ghost doctors or ghost policeman or ghost soldiers.”

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[Mnemosyne]

1. Sounds like a low-ball figure, imo. Crooks all. nt

[LakeVermilion]

2. So plenty of people would like to have us back again

1. US contractors so we can be overcharged,
2. Iraqis government, so they can take their cut,
3. ISIS, so they can get more military equipment,
4. US government officials so they can set aside a few bucks for their post retirement;

[librechik]

3. not a scam, all nice and legal. And they continue to this day.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. We were scammed by Cheney and Bush. Contractors do what contractors do. n/t

[nakocal]

5. Same army trained by the "Brilliant" General Petraeus

This is the same army trained by the "Brilliant" General Petraeus, hero of the right. The same General Petraeus who lost over a million small arms, and who gave classified information to a reporter.

Now tell me again why republicans are better in matters of foreign policy and national security?

[abelenkpe]

6. We'll just cut more social programs and

Money for infrastructure, education, etc. to feed our need for more war. Because after, what? 15 years of war, of supplying different groups with arms, of drones bombing suspects in other countries, of special terrorist holding cells at Guantanamo bay, of spying on anyone for any reason we need to double down and do more of the same.

[valerief]

7. And who can forget Rummy on 9-10-01 who told us the military couldn't account

for 2 trillion dollars missing?

[McKim]

8. My Answer to the We Can't Afford Social Programs

Whenever a politician or person says we can't afford a raise in the minimum wage, social security, health care benefits, I say:
$4 billion? Threw that off the back of the truck in Iraq in two seconds in 2003, whadda ya mean, we can't afford it!

[blackspade]

9. I'd say that is on the low end.