revelarts
03-10-2013, 11:47 PM
15 mil per day for reconstruction in Iraq for the 10 years we've been there, happy anniversary
say new official reports.
And By the way the same or More money is being spent in Afghanistan every day for the past 12 years.
but sequestrating and taxing the rich and payroll taxes is what the problem is with the budget.
can anyone here think of a few things the country could do/ could have done with 15 million a day?
What the heck wrong with this picture folks?
Iraq Reconstruction Cost U.S. $60 Billion, Left Behind Corruption And Wastehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/iraq-reconstruction_n_2819899.html?ref=topbar
And despite a $60 billion U.S effort to rebuild Iraq, life for most Iraqis has not improved significantly, according to a bitter and regretful retrospective by Iraqi officials and U.S. diplomats, military officers and politicians. Their views come with the final report of the Special U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (http://www.sigir.mil/learningfromiraq/index.html), released Wednesday. Congress set up the SIGIR office in November of 2003 to monitor the vast sums of Iraqi and U.S. money being spent by the U.S. occupation authorities in Baghdad.
Over nine years, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen and his staff relentlessly tracked down what happened to the $146 billion in Iraqi money and the $60 billion in U.S. funds -- much of it airlifted to Iraq in pallets of shrink-wrapped $50 bills. Despite the claims of President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials that t the United States would rebuild an even better Iraq after the March 2003 invasion and occupation, the money "underperformed," Bowen noted dryly in the report....
"There was misspending of money," said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in one of the colossal understatements contained in the massive report.....
...
Raheem al-Ugaili, a judge and head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity until 2011, pursued dozens of corruption investigations involving U.S.-funded projects until he was fired for reaching too deeply into Iraq's political elite.
"Vast amounts of money were wasted without attaining actual intended results," al-Ugaili told SIGIR. He identified one major problem common to U.S. reconstruction efforts: Americans excluded Iraqis from the planning and prioritizing of projects.
But worse than simply wasted money and incomplete projects was the culture of corruption left behind. "Sketching out a grim picture of Iraq's anti-corruption institutions in full retreat, the judge asserted that the level of kickbacks to [Iraq government] officials and the volume of money laundering continue to grow," SIGIR reports.
That culture has seeped into the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as well, according to Ryan Crocker (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/world/asia/ambassador-crocker-sees-fraught-foreign-landscape-ahead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), who served as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012 after leading the political-military campaign in Iraq from 2007 to 2009 with Petraeus. Corruption, cost over-runs and unfinished construction of U.S.-funded projects in Afghanistan are documented in regular reports from the U.S. Special Inspector General For Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) (http://www.sigar.mil/), also a congressionally mandated watchdog.
Crocker told SIGAR that the United States had done a better job in Afghanistan in including local Afghans in the planning process. But as in Iraq, he said, the United States had launched ambitious projects for which Afghans had neither the expertise nor the money to operate.
For instance, he said Afghanistan lacks the money to maintain the new road system built with reconstruction funds.
"We're already seeing them crumbling," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dam-and-other-afghan-projects-being-scaled-back-as-us-picks-up-pace-of-withdrawal/2013/03/04/565fe7d0-84f1-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html
http://scotthorton.org/2013/03/08/3813-peter-van-buren/
http://wemeantwell.com/blog/tag/sigar/
say new official reports.
And By the way the same or More money is being spent in Afghanistan every day for the past 12 years.
but sequestrating and taxing the rich and payroll taxes is what the problem is with the budget.
can anyone here think of a few things the country could do/ could have done with 15 million a day?
What the heck wrong with this picture folks?
Iraq Reconstruction Cost U.S. $60 Billion, Left Behind Corruption And Wastehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/iraq-reconstruction_n_2819899.html?ref=topbar
And despite a $60 billion U.S effort to rebuild Iraq, life for most Iraqis has not improved significantly, according to a bitter and regretful retrospective by Iraqi officials and U.S. diplomats, military officers and politicians. Their views come with the final report of the Special U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (http://www.sigir.mil/learningfromiraq/index.html), released Wednesday. Congress set up the SIGIR office in November of 2003 to monitor the vast sums of Iraqi and U.S. money being spent by the U.S. occupation authorities in Baghdad.
Over nine years, Inspector General Stuart W. Bowen and his staff relentlessly tracked down what happened to the $146 billion in Iraqi money and the $60 billion in U.S. funds -- much of it airlifted to Iraq in pallets of shrink-wrapped $50 bills. Despite the claims of President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials that t the United States would rebuild an even better Iraq after the March 2003 invasion and occupation, the money "underperformed," Bowen noted dryly in the report....
"There was misspending of money," said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in one of the colossal understatements contained in the massive report.....
...
Raheem al-Ugaili, a judge and head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity until 2011, pursued dozens of corruption investigations involving U.S.-funded projects until he was fired for reaching too deeply into Iraq's political elite.
"Vast amounts of money were wasted without attaining actual intended results," al-Ugaili told SIGIR. He identified one major problem common to U.S. reconstruction efforts: Americans excluded Iraqis from the planning and prioritizing of projects.
But worse than simply wasted money and incomplete projects was the culture of corruption left behind. "Sketching out a grim picture of Iraq's anti-corruption institutions in full retreat, the judge asserted that the level of kickbacks to [Iraq government] officials and the volume of money laundering continue to grow," SIGIR reports.
That culture has seeped into the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan as well, according to Ryan Crocker (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/world/asia/ambassador-crocker-sees-fraught-foreign-landscape-ahead.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), who served as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2011 to 2012 after leading the political-military campaign in Iraq from 2007 to 2009 with Petraeus. Corruption, cost over-runs and unfinished construction of U.S.-funded projects in Afghanistan are documented in regular reports from the U.S. Special Inspector General For Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) (http://www.sigar.mil/), also a congressionally mandated watchdog.
Crocker told SIGAR that the United States had done a better job in Afghanistan in including local Afghans in the planning process. But as in Iraq, he said, the United States had launched ambitious projects for which Afghans had neither the expertise nor the money to operate.
For instance, he said Afghanistan lacks the money to maintain the new road system built with reconstruction funds.
"We're already seeing them crumbling," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/dam-and-other-afghan-projects-being-scaled-back-as-us-picks-up-pace-of-withdrawal/2013/03/04/565fe7d0-84f1-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html
http://scotthorton.org/2013/03/08/3813-peter-van-buren/
http://wemeantwell.com/blog/tag/sigar/