The real crime in Iraq - -money handed out without question. [View All]

[JDPriestly]

I used to write grants including federal, state and community grants for a homeless project. We did a lot of good work, but let me tell you, grants were scarce. And qualifying for them was not easy. Your program had to be very carefully organized to meet the requirements of the grant and you had to present your program so as to show that it met those requirements. In addition, you had to compete with other good programs. Each program was awarded points for having certain components that the government wanted them to have. For example, a program might get points for having a solid volunteer component or psychological counseling. And, of course, you usually had to show that you could raise private money or money from other government sources.

The criteria were always different, always a challenge. And if you were lucky enough to get the grant, you had to file reports on a regular basis in which you had to account for the progress of your program and prove to the government that you were making good use of their precious and scarce and reluctantly given money. It was a lot of work and took a lot of staff time -- and mind you this was for amounts of money that were pitifully small in comparison with the huge demand for services and the drastic needs of the population being served. I don't do that kind of work any more, but, judging from the ever increasing homeless population, I assume that the grant process is still as daunting as it was then, and the money just as scarce and hard to get.

So you will understand that when I heard today's testimony and discussion, I felt sick to my stomach. Here is General Petraeus and the American military just handing out money without grant proposals, without reports on how the money is spent. They are simply bribing people with our tax money, with money that they give only reluctantly to our own homeless population.

We've heard a lot about how Bush's War is a war against the Iraqi people. Today I realized that it is really a war against the American people, especially the needy among us. If the government is going to give out money in Iraq, let them at least use the same grant process they used to use with homeless projects here.