Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Cal., has this mantra about contracting in Iraq: Waste, fraud and abuse.
Unfortunately, much of what he has been railing about has now been proven to be far more accurate than what his congressional opponents claim. US and coalition powers (the coalition being about 1 percent of the authority) have spent over $50 billion on reconstruction alone — including $30 in US Taxpayer money and $20 billion in seized Iraqi assets.
Then, of course, there is anouther $20 billion or more on contractors suppliying services to the military.
It’s all starting to add up to a lot of money. Waxman’s rant Thursday on the House floor during the war debate:
Before we went to war, President Bush and other senior Administration officials made three promises to the American people: (1) we would find weapons of mass destruction; (2) we would be welcomed as liberators; and (3) the reconstruction of Iraq would pay for itself.
All three promises turned out to be false.
Agreed, way too much waste. These companies are coming up with off the wall ideas all the time—and the ACO is signing off on them for some reason. You wouldn’t beleive all the waste and bogus contracts I saw the Army civilians of PCO and USACE coming up with in 2004. Rather than use a known company to build the PCO compound, they opted to hire local————-and paid cash up front—to no less than 3 seperate contractors who messed it all up and took the money and ran. Supposedly, their compound cost 4 times what it was supposed to and I DO know that it was finished almost a year late.