Billions of U.S. Tax Dollars Spent and Nothing to Show for it in Iraq!!!!

 By Keith Johnson

Just as Washington contemplates additional

tax hikes and austerity cuts for the Ameri-

can people, a shocking report surfaces that

sheds new light on the kind of wasteful over-

seas government spending that contributes to the

impending debt crisis.

According to a recent retrospective from Stuart

Bowen, the U.S. special inspector

general for Iraq reconstruction

(SIGIR), a significant portion of the

American taxpayer dollars spent

on rebuilding projects in Iraq have

largely been squandered or unac-

counted for while doing very little

to improve the lives of Iraqis.

The report, entitled “Learning

from Iraq,” comes just two weeks

before the 10th anniversary of the U.S. led invasion

and has some lawmakers on Capitol Hill calling for

a “top-to-bottom” review of the State Department

and its foreign assistance agency U.S. AID.

“The extent of waste and abuse in the $60 billion

of Iraq reconstruction funds coupled with the in-

stability still evident in Iraq is appalling and high-

lights real failures of planning and execution that

must be corrected to make U.S. foreign assistance

a more effective tool for advancing the national in-

terests of our country,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-

Tenn.) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Iraq’s acting Interior Minister Adnan al-Asadi is

quoted in the report as saying that “major mistakes”

contributed to the failures of U.S. reconstruction

efforts, including overpaying contractors on proj-

ects that ended up costing double or triple their ac-

tual worth, absence of meaningful cooperation and

coordination between U.S. authorities and the gov-

ernment of Iraq, and tolerance of rampant corrup-

tion that occurred on both the Iraqi and U.S. sides.

“With all the money the U.S. has

spent, you can go into any city in

Iraq and you cannot find one build-

ing or project [built by the U.S. gov-

ernment],” al-Asadi said. “You can

fly in a helicopter around Baghdad

or other cities, but you cannot

point a finger at a single project

that was built and completed by

the United States.”

Among those unfinished projects is a half-built

prison in Diyala that cost U.S. taxpayers $40 mil-

lion before being deemed unsafe and ultimately

abandoned. Another is the Basrah Children’s Hos-

pital, which the SIGIR notes is currently “200 per-

cent over budget and four years behind schedule.”

According to a SIGIR interview with Iraqi Prime

Minister Nouri al-Maliki, U.S. reliance on “ill-in-

formed” and “dishonest” subcontractors signifi-

cantly contributed to the misspending of U.S. funds.

In the report, al-Maliki recollects that the United

States built over 100 healthcare centers “at a cost

far more than budgeted, while delivering much less

than promised.” SIGIR audits confirm this, noting

that primary healthcare programs have thus far cost

$345 million and are now 40 percent over budget. In

yet another example of overspending, the prime

minister recalls a minor school refurbishment proj-

ect “for which the school’s administrator requested

$10,000, but the U.S. authorities insisted on provid-

ing $70,000—a needless waste.”

Other expensive projects that have underper-

formed include a water treatment plant in Fallujah.

Though the estimated $35 million facility was ex-

pected to be up and running within 18 months, the

construction actually took seven years and cost a

total of $108 million. By the time it was completed

in 2011, the facility ended up assisting only 38 per-

cent of the Iraqi population it was designed to serve.

In terms of corruption, the SIGIR report gives

several examples, including a crime ring run by a

former U.S. Army officer who paid out tens of mil-

lion of dollars in kickbacks for bottled-water con-

tracts while working at the Iraqi reconstruction

headquarters in Kuwait.

Although the recent disclosures on wasteful gov-

ernment spending in Iraq are appalling enough,

they still dwarf the horrific human costs of a need-

less war that has claimed the lives of roughly 5,000

Americans and 1.5 million Iraqis and left an entire

nation in ruins.

Kadom al-Jabouri, an Iraqi who made interna-

tional headlines after being photographed taking a

sledgehammer to a statue of Saddam Hussein, re-

cently told

The Guardian

that he now regrets tak-

ing part in the demolition in light of what has

occurred over the past 10 years.

“Under Saddam there was security,” said al-

Jabouri. “There was corruption, but nothing like

this. Our lives were protected. And many of the ba-

sics like electricity and gas were more affordable.”

He went on to say, “The Americans began it. And

then with the politicians they destroyed the coun-

try. Things seem to get worse all the time.”

——

Keith Johnson

is an independent journalist and the editor of “Revolt of the

Plebs,” an alternative news website at http://revoltoftheplebs.wordpress.com/