What happens when you hand out money like candy at Halloween to government contractors overseas to rebuild infrastructure in Afghanistan, and then you fail to properly check take sure the work is being done? Take a wild-assed guess (I bet even our conservative friends could get this one right):
WASHINGTON — The U.S. has spent more than $732 million to improve Afghanistan’s electrical grid since 2002, but many of the projects have been plagued by delays and rising costs in part because of poor oversight by the American government, a watchdog agency reports.
Of six projects underway in 2009, only one has been completed on time.
The report issued by auditors with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR, for short — who thinks up these names anyway?) says it was all the fault of “poor communication” between the contracting firms and officials for the U.S. Agency for International Development, who apparently relied almost solely on reports by the companies which were often incomplete and untimely.
So this is all Obama’s fault, right? Well, not exactly. You see the companies involved were given contracts to rebuild the electrical grid in Afghanistan before anyone had prepared a “concrete plan” on how to rebuild the grid — back in the Bush era. In fact, it wasn’t until Democrats controlled Congress in 2007 that SIGAR was created.
Inspector General Arnold Fields told McClatchy that his agency should have been created before 2008 so waste and fraud could be better detected.
The U.S. government “should have been more aggressive years ago,” he said. “We’re behind in terms of providing the oversight.”
His agency currently has 41 ongoing investigations.
Not surprisingly, the contracts involved were given to companies who are suspected of fraud, waste and corruption — the Louis Berger Group of New Jersey and Black & Veatch.
Plagued by delays and rising costs, the project reveals how the U.S. government continues to ignore the hard lessons of Iraq, critics say, where contractors received billions of dollars with little oversight and inspectors have found rampant waste, fraud and abuse.
Like Halliburton, which by some estimates took in more than $10 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts, Louis Berger/Black & Veatch received a so-called “cost plus contract,” which reimburses costs and pays a percentage of those expenses as a fee. […]
Even so, cost-plus contracts can encourage waste and overbilling, experts said. Auditors and investigators who scrutinized Halliburton’s contracts over several years in Iraq, for instance, found millions of dollars in double-billing and inflated costs.
Oh, and those power plants being built? Afghanistan’s government won’t be able to afford operating them, because of the cost of the diesel fuel they require to generate electricity.
The Afghan government is expected to need up to $70 million in aid a year to truck in diesel fuel for the plant and at least another $60 million to maintain and repair it.
I wonder who will get stuck with the tab for “another fine mess Bush” left President Obama to deal with?*
* That’s a rhetorical question, folks. We all know who will bear the cost of Bushco’s incompetence — You and I.
they can’t afford a national army either.
Which congressperson do I need to bribe to get one of those contracts?
America has become the world’s crazy, stinky old rich uncle. You need to get on the right side of his money rather than having it used to hurt you, so you put up with a whole load of crap while pretending as best you can to respect and admire his kindness and his competence.
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Rice: No ‘American Money’ In Iraq Was Lost To Corruption
(The Independent) Feb. 16, 2009 – In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme. [SIGIR Report 2009 – pdf]
“I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad,” said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in “pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills” to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.
American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004. It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, who have both said they have nothing to hide.
Dale C. Stoffel, an American contractor in Iraq.In the expanded inquiry by federal agencies, the evidence of a small-time US businessman called Dale C Stoffel who was murdered after leaving the US base at Taiji north of Baghdad in 2004 is being re-examined. Before he was killed, Mr Stoffel, an arms dealer and contractor, was granted limited immunity from prosecution after he had provided information that a network of bribery – linking companies and US officials awarding contracts – existed within the US-run Green Zone in Baghdad. He said bribes of tens of thousands of dollars were regularly delivered in pizza boxes sent to US contracting officers.
Missing Cash
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."