Iraq's missing billions

The question on everyone's lips over the last few months has been "can things get any worse in Iraq?". Apparently they just did.

A report via The Independent claims that at least one billion dollars (US$ value, I'm guessing, though the article doesn't stipulate the currency), but possibly double that amount, has gone missing from the nation's ministries.

The funds disappeared over an eight-month period in the previous financial year. Comparisons are being made about the fraud and the oil-for-food scandal during Saddam's leadership, which lost $1.8 billion dollars.

While the United Nations has felt the scathing pressure of world opinion for its lack of policing and accountability of the oil-for-food program, USA forces and diplomats were in a much better position to prevent this significant episode of theft, fraud and corruption. The fallout is expected to be severely damaging to the US.

According to the report, the money was siphoned away through a series of unscrupulous deals to purchase arms from Poland and Pakistan. The deals were peculiar because they were:

"awarded without bidding ... signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier ... the money was paid up front and ... paid at great speed out of the ministry's account."

Instead of receiving quality weaponry and machinery, Iraq was left with inferior equipment with some of it past its useful life, such as 28 year old soviet-built helicopters that the manufacturers claim should have been scrapped after 25 years.

No doubt these revelations will add to the woes of the Iraqi and US administrations and any hopes of an early pull-out by allied forces are all but dashed as Iraq is now clearly incapable of adequately training its military or providing the necessary infrastructure to protect itself from insurgency.

The USA is now here for the long haul, its feet stuck in a quagmire of corruption, mismanagement and insurgency that seems futile to try and stop. Nothing short of a miracle could stop the country travelling further down the path of chaos and soon the USA will be beyond its own capability to protect its own interests.


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