Posted by D. Cupples | It seems that a pattern is emerging. Today's New York Times reports:
"After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped." (NYT)
This is not surprising. In September, a Vanity Fair article described transfers of literally tons of U.S. cash to Iraq from 2002-04 -- more than $12 billion dollars, of which about $9 billion simply disappeared.
Why was so much money lost (or stolen)? Because some U.S. officials -- e.g., former Coalition Provisional Authority administrator Paul Bremer -- failed to set up effective systems to track the cash. (Vanity Fair)
In August, we learned that the Pentagon had lost track of 190,000 U.S. weapons sent to Iraq in 2004-05, to arm Iraqi security forces. Again, officials had simply failed to put an accounting system in place before handing out weapons. The chilling fact is that more AK-47s and pistols went missing than the number of U.S. troops that are in Iraq.
Just this month, we learned that more than $1 billion in U.S. military hardware is unaccounted for (e.g., vehicles, crates of machine guns, grenades, uniforms...). Yet again, there was a failure to set up accounting procedures.
Apparently, accountability is not the Bush Administration's strong suit -- and the problems aren't restricted to overseas spending.
Last year alone, for example, FEMA reportedly wasted $30 million maintaining trailers for Mississippi's Hurricane Katrina victims. In one case, FEMA spent $229,000 on contracts to support one family in a single trailer for one year. Wouldn't it have been more cost effective to build a modest house?
In August 2006, the House Oversight Committee published a report about Hurricane Katrina contracts, which states that 19 contracts worth almost $9 billion were "plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement," and most problems stemmed from contract administration or performance.
More examples of waste, fraud and abuse are linked below. Memeorandum has other bloggers' commentary.
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