Pentagon Audit: Iraq Spending Unlawful: "We Don't Know What We Got" for 8.2 Billion Dollars
Once again in Iraq, we don't know what we got for 8.2 billion dollars. And this has been going on for 5 years. Whatever happened to the billions of dollars in US currency--up to 12 billion dollars-- literally stolen from Fort Knox in the early days of the war? No one knows. If this doesn't warrant hearings, then we no longer live in country of laws. What a disgrace. Looking into theft, corruption and war profiteering should be job two of President Obama's Sec. of Defense. Safely bringing home our troops should be job one.
Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says
By JAMES GLANZ
A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.
The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.
In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.
Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for auditing, told members of the committee that the absence of anything beyond a voucher meant that “we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment.”
“We don’t know what we got,” Ms. Ugone said in response to questions by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.
Iraq Spending Ignored Rules, Pentagon Says
By JAMES GLANZ
A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.
The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.
In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.
Mary L. Ugone, the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for auditing, told members of the committee that the absence of anything beyond a voucher meant that “we were giving or providing a payment without any basis for the payment.”
“We don’t know what we got,” Ms. Ugone said in response to questions by the committee chairman, Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.
posted by Faithful Progressive at 8:35 AM
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