U.S. Won't Turn Over Data for Iraq Audits -WP

[Rose Siding]

UNITED NATIONS, July 15 -- The Bush administration is withholding information from U.N.-sanctioned auditors examining more than $1 billion in contracts awarded to Halliburton Co. and other companies in Iraq without competitive bidding, the head of the international auditing board said Thursday.

Jean-Pierre Halbwachs, the U.N. representative to the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), said that the United States has repeatedly rebuffed his requests since March to turn over internal audits, including one that covered three contracts valued at $1.4 billion that were awarded to Halliburton, a Texas-based oil services firm. It has also failed to produced a list of other companies that have obtained contracts without having to compete.

The Security Council established the IAMB, which includes representatives from the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, in May 2003 to ensure that Iraq's oil revenue would be managed responsibly during the U.S. occupation. The council extended its mandate in July so it could continue to monitor the use of Iraq's oil revenue after the United States transferred political authority to the Iraqis in June.

The dispute comes as the board released an initial audit by the accounting firm KPMG on Thursday that sharply criticized the U.S.-led coalition's management of billions of dollars in Iraqi oil revenue. The audit also raised concerns about lax financial controls in some Iraqi ministries, citing poor bookkeeping and duplicate payments of salaries to government employees.
...
In a written response to the criticism included in the report, the U.S.-led coalition said management of Iraq's oil industry was hampered by ongoing violence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53164-2004Jul15.html

[quaoar]

1. Does anyone else find it suspicious

That two Iraqi government auditors have been assassinated in the last couple weeks. One dead auditor is a tragedy of war. Two dead auditors is a conspiracy.

[cliss]

2. Wow. I missed this.

Jeez, who could have guessed that being an auditor is considered to be a hazardous profession. Deadly.

[CHIMO]

21. Now I Wonder

ROBERT FISK: Well, when I got there, as always after major bombings and atrocities, there was chaos, there were a large number of people believing that their families may have been wounded or killed. Of course, any family who knew that their loved ones were queuing at the gate at that moment to enter the Iraqi government compound naturally assumed the worst and rushed to the hospital. Some of the people being brought in, some of the wounded, were so badly mutilated and covered in so much blood, they were unrecognizable. One woman clearly did not at first recognize her own husband. One man came in with only a stump at the end of his arm. And I remember thinking, crazily, I saw a human hand beside one of the bombed vehicles, I wonder if it's his hand. That's the kind of horror that people here now face daily, and which we see – at least if we go out, we see. I think that there's one thing that is very constantly seen here. which one has to say or admit, that Iraqis say they'd rather have law and democracy and they want an end to this abyss of lawlessness.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Just 24 hours ago, I went to the funeral of a senior official in the Industry Ministry, a man whose job, actually, was to check the accounts to prevent fraud by the big contracting agencies who are rebuilding Iraq.
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He was a father of seven children. I met his youngest son and his older son. Mohammad was 11 and his eldest son Akram, was 20. And he came back home, bringing his family their breakfast, milk, cream, bread. A car with three men and one of them with a cell phone, called another vehicle, a pickup truck, which arrived with two very professional killers; two shots in the head, two shots in the stomach. The family found him lying with one leg still in his car. And at the funeral, and at the funeral meal afterwards, it's a tradition in the Muslim world to meet with all the family afterwards in a tent in the street outside, one of the sons said to me, you know, we would like democracy, but we've had 35 years without. And it has given freedom to thieves and murderers, not to us. These people want more strict laws, they want the return of capital punishment, I'm sorry to say. But that's what they say they want. It doesn't mean they want Saddam back, but that's what they say they want. And a measure of the lawlessness and the horror is that when they returned for the second time to the mosque to collect the coffin in which to put the body of the dead civil servant, a man called Sepal Karim, there was a bomb inside the coffin. It didn't go off. When I visited the funeral tent, they had surrounded it with vehicles because they were frightened some of them might drive a car loaded with explosives, a suicide bomber might drive into the funeral tent. That is the – that is the extent of fear and horror and danger that Iraq is going through. Though I can say you're not reading that in the American press all the time.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/16/1442227

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I separated the sentence from the paragraph as I could not highlight it.
It is all one paragraph.

[Sparky McGruff]

3. On orders from D. Cheney...

Told them to go F. themselves.

[aquart]

4. When they are gone.....and they WILL be removed....

We are going to spend years, maybe decades figuring how much they stole.

This has been a huge criminal enterprise. People need to go to jail. The nation needs people to go to jail. We MUST prosecute, convict, and sentence hard.

[banana republican]

5. Well that is

how we got Al Capone. It was an auditor who took him down for tax evasion.

Maybe we should turn the IRS loose on these people.

Since there is no statute of limitations for tax fraud; we can wait until Kerry wins the election.

[shanti]

6. doesn't anyone remember the story

about the semis that halliburton would drive back and forth across the iraqi desert with NOTHING in them??? and to top it off, when they broke down, the semis would be left on the side of the road, abandoned?

we paid for this.

[Terry_M]

9. They've been caught with

extremely inefficient spending of money more than once already in this war alone... And yet they continue to get no-bid contracts... Seriously, Kerry had better start a dozen lawsuits and investigations when he gets in... Someone better end up in jail. The more, the better.

[TacticalPeek]

7. Why does arithmetic hate America?

Bushco seems to be having a problem getting the "right" accountants and auditors.

[bluedeminredstate]

8. Thanks for that!!

The chewed up apple that WAS in my mouth is now all over my monitor!
:7

[cybildisobedience]

13. arithmetic doesn't hate America....

It hates us for our FREEDOMS....
silly

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Overheard a dinner conversation: "They took us to the cleaners" --

Last week, at the next table in a restaurant abroad, a man and a woman sat -- the man, from what I could not help overhearing, was very knowledgeable about the situation in Iraq, and, I think, Iraqi himself. He looked quite well-to-do. Speaking financially, and about the U.S., I heard him say clearly, "They took us to the cleaners."

[DeepModem Mom]

11. kick

[UpInArms]

12. *Co Executive Order on March 20, 2003

http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-13290.htm

Executive Order 13290 of March 20, 2003

Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and in order to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 12722 of August 2, 1990,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, hereby determine that the United States and Iraq are engaged in armed hostilities, that it is in the interest of the United States to confiscate certain property of the Government of Iraq and its agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities, and that all right, title, and interest in any property so confiscated should vest in the Department of the Treasury. I intend that such vested property should be used to assist the Iraqi people and to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq, and determine that such use would be in the interest of and for the benefit of the United States.

I hereby order:

Section 1. All blocked funds held in the United States in accounts in the name of the Government of Iraq, the Central Bank of Iraq, Rafidain Bank, Rasheed Bank, or the State Organization for Marketing Oil are hereby confiscated and vested in the Department of the Treasury, except for the following:

(a) any such funds that are subject to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations or the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, or that enjoy equivalent privileges and immunities under the laws of the United States, and are or have been used for diplomatic or consular purposes, and

(b) any such amounts that as of the date of this order are subject to post-judgment writs of execution or attachment in aid of execution of judgments pursuant to section 201 of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (Public Law 107 297), provided that, upon satisfaction of the judgments on which such writs are based, any remainder of such excepted amounts shall, by virtue of this order and without further action, be confiscated and vested.

Sec. 2. The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized to perform, without further approval, ratification, or other action of the President, all functions of the President set forth in section 203(a)(1)(C) of IEEPA with respect to any and all property of the Government of Iraq, including its agencies, instrumentalities, or controlled entities, and to take additional steps, including the promulgation of rules and regulations as may be necessary, to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate such functions in accordance with applicable law. The Secretary of the Treasury shall consult the Attorney General as appropriate in the implementation of this order.

Sec. 3. This order shall be transmitted to the Congress and published in the Federal Register.

George W. Bush

THE WHITE HOUSE,

March 20, 2003.

[Spazito]

14. Disgusting but not surprising....

given the intent of the bush admin was to rip off the Iraqi people right from the beginning and theft is, after all, the hallmark of the bush admin.

[DeepModem Mom]

15. Kicking this outrage again --

[struggle4progress]

20. And again.

:kick:

[KoKo]

16. Okay...where are the Senate Investigations...where's the "Special

Prosecutor."

OOps...forgot...after the Election....we will have to wait.

[struggle4progress]

17. Big time corruption? eom

[daleo]

18. So, what will happen to all the talk about "Oil for Food" program scandal

It may become inconvenient to remind voters of the words scandal and Iraq in the same sentence, so that whole angle may be dropped. More likely, though, the echo chamber will start going on about it, as a distraction from Halliburton scandals. That seems to be the m.o. of this bunch.

[G_j]

19. IMO Kerry should have jumped on this when the Christian Aid report

first came out. I am constantly perplexed by his silence on a lot of things.

and the war is not about oil??

[struggle4progress]

22. deserves another kick

:kick: