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“The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known.”
— Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds
The next time the United States of America decides to rebuild a Third World country after a war, it should make sure it has some fiscal controls in place before checks are written.
Otherwise, it could pay profiteering contractors $80 for a pipe fitting its competitor sells for $1.41. That, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds’ final audit.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the nine years of Operation Iraqi Freedom carried an $806 billion price tag. Add in that the $51 billion program to rebuild Iraq suffered from myriad accounting weaknesses that put “billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation.”
It all sounded so very WWII/Marshall Plan when it started, yet in retrospect looks like No Real Plan.
The inspector general’s office says taxpayers may never know how much of their hard-earned money was wasted in the effort, just that it “could be substantial.” It blames having too few auditors, explains that billing documents were reviewed sloppily by U.S. contracting officers if they were reviewed at all, and says the reconstruction effort “was dogged from the start by persistent violence, shifting goals, constantly changing contracting practices and undermined by a lack of unity of effort.” That tail-wagging-the-dog random approach to public accountability means “a complete accounting of all reconstruction expenditures is impossible to achieve.”
As if that’s not bad enough, the office goes out of business in 2013. On second thought, that may be for the best, considering it has spent more than $200 million to recover $176 million via fines and other penalties.
Better for the bottom line to quit while we’re behind.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
