Oh come on!1 Why aren’t these criminals in jail? Realistically, how do you lose such massive amounts of money?
The Defense Department is unable to properly account for $8.7 billion out of $9.1 billion in Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to it between 2004 and 2007, according to a newly released audit that underscores a pattern of poor record-keeping during the war.
Of that amount, the military failed to provide any records at all for $2.6 billion in purported reconstruction expenditure, says the report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which is responsible for monitoring U.S. spending in Iraq. The rest of the money was not properly deposited in special accounts as required under Treasury Department rules, making it difficult to trace how it was spent.
Though there is no apparent evidence of fraud, the improper accounting practices add to the pattern of mismanagement, reckless spending and, in some instances, corruption uncovered by the agency since 2004, when it was created to oversee the total of $53 billion in U.S. taxpayer money appropriated by Congress for the reconstruction effort.
No apparent evidence of fraud? Simple accounting errors?
First, let’s look at those numbers in the proper context. With lots of zeros. $8,700,000,000. Out of $9,100,000,000. Missing. Gone. Poof.
Now, let’s do the math. $8,700,000,000 divided by $9,100,000,000. That comes to 0.9560. Or 95.6%. Missing. Of the Iraqi oil revenue entrusted to the Defense Department between 2004 and 2007. Which would be during the Bush-Cheney administration. Which would be mostly during the tenure of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.
(click to continue reading Daily Kos: Bush DoD lost $8,700,000,000 in Iraqi oil revenue.)
That is a lot of fracking money to be “unaccounted” for, no?
And just to say it again, because I had the same reaction as Laurence Lewis of Daily Kos: No evidence of fraud? Really? Really?
Footnotes:- in my best Gob Bluth voice [↩]