down the drain

Tonight we watched a Channel 4 Documentary called Iraq's Missing Billions - about how over 20 billion dollars were spent, misspent, stolen or are generally unaccounted for in Iraq. This was mismanagement by the Coalition Provisional Authority on a grand scale.

Nearly 3 billion was spent in the last month of CPA rule to avoid handing it over to the new Iraqi government. Good money went after bad. This week two civilian contractors were found guilty of fraudently claiming 11 million dollars. In the Guardian Blog:

When the two men who make up Custer Battles - Scott Custer and Michael Battles, (who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican Congressional candidate in 2002) - arrived in Iraq, one former workmate said they didn't have enough money between them to pay the $15 airport tax. Within months they had contracts worth $37.5 million for security and transport work.

In the case that ended last week, Custer Battles were found guilty under the false claims act on three counts. Now they've been ordered to pay back approximately $11 million. The attorney who led their successful prosecution told Dispatches: "There is an orgy of greed among the contractors in Iraq. American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone.....in a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like."

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Nothing upsets me more than failures of public governance through greed or incompetence or in the case of administering post-invasion Iraq - both. People in power have a duty and a trust to uphold. Honesty, probity, demonstrating value for money. Money wasted is money that belongs to the people not being spent on the people.

But at least somebody finally went after these guys, Custer and Battle (Surely these two jokers must have seen that their last names together was a bad omen.) And while that's eleven million accounted for - there's still 19,989,000,000 to go.