Iraq audit can't find billions

[whosinpower]

More fodder for Kerry.
Not sure if this has been posted here at DU - and the article is a few days old - but it hits hard, very hard at Bushco credibility on Iraq.

http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=7313

snip - Hundreds of projects worth more than $100 million covered by the Commander's Emergency Response Program, designed to allow US military officers to quickly fund small reconstruction projects around the country, had either no contracts on file, no evidence that bids were obtained through competition, no purchase invoices, or no payment vouchers.

Weapons were paid for under a buyback program with funds specifically prohibited for such use.

The coalition authority gave money to the Iraqi Ministry of Finance, which then maintained two different sets of records. The report said a ''reconciliation between these two sets of accounting records was not prepared and the difference was significant."

''The audit report is yet more evidence of the Bush administration's mismanagement of Iraqi and US taxpayer resources in their failed effort to reconstruct Iraq," Susan Rice, a top national security adviser for Kerry, said in a statement. ''Unfortunately, waste, fraud, and abuse have become the hallmark of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq."

[gratuitous]

1. Gee, where's Paul Bremer?

You don't think that money was stolen, do you?

I'd give a shiny nickel to the first responsible journalist who will use the "C" word about the corrupt Bush administration.

[kayell]

2. This war made possible the largest embezzlement in our countries history.

They distracted us all with fear and then killed tens of thousands to cover the robbing of the US treasury.

[MadHound]

3. Can you say Haliburton children, there, I knew you could!

Just more off the books profit for the BFEE. Skimming off the top for Haliburton, KBR, and all the rest. Hell, we didn't get into this war to spread freedom and democracy, we got into it so that the BFEE could pull down obscene profits.