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US Misspent Billions on War Over 10 Years US Misspent $34B in Afghanistan, Iraq over 10 years, Panel Claims Updated: Saturday, 23 Jul 2011, 12:07 PM CDT Published : Saturday, 23 Jul 2011, 12:07 PM CDT (Wall Street Journal) - WASHINGTON -- The US wasted or misspent $34 billion contracting for services in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a draft report by a bipartisan congressional panel, the most comprehensive effort so far to tally the overall cost of a decade of battlefield contracting in America's two big wars, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The three-year investigation came from the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was established by the US Congress in 2008. Its final report, expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the next few weeks, lays out in detail the failure of federal agencies to properly manage and oversee grants and contracts set to exceed a total of $206 billion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. The draft report, which was viewed by the WSJ, identified myriad instances of projects that were poorly conceived. They include a $300 million US Agency for International Development agricultural development project with a "burn rate" of $1 million a day that paid Afghan farmers to work in their own fields. It flagged diversion of funds to insurgents, such as a subcontractor on a community development project in eastern Afghanistan paying 20 percent of their contract to insurgents for "protection." And it touched on cases where the host government was unable to sustain a US-funded project, like a costly water treatment plant in Nasiriya, Iraq, that produced murky water and lacked steady electric power. Around 75 percent of the total contract dollars spent to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan went to just 23 major contractors, but the federal work force assigned to oversee those contracts has not grown in parallel with the massive growth in wartime expenditures. The report warned that the eventual withdrawal of US troops and assistance posed the risk of "massive new wastes of money," because both the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan may be poorly prepared to manage projects begun with US taxpayer funds. Read more at WSJ.com Read more: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpps/new...#ixzz1Swx0QxTj |
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Re: US Misspent Billions on War Over 10 Years i wouldn't have minded a share of that mis-spent money, damn |
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candymosh |
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Re: US Misspent Billions on War Over 10 Years duh |