Iraq Fraud Bigger than Madoff: US Officals and Contractors Stole Over $50 Billion
The real looting was not by the residents of the slums, said one US businessman in Iraq since 2003. Robert Stein, Jr., a US comptroller, was convicted of fraud and money laundering. He was appointed by Bush to be the South-Central Iraq comptroller.
Stein had a picture taken of himself standing in front of pallets filled with US$57.8 million in Iraq. US military officers are also being investigated. Though $125 billion was invested, the only cranes seen in Baghdad are at the US Embassy.
Republicans were given important jobs despite a lack of experience. The connected Republican put in charge of the stock exchange had to close it because he failed to renew its lease. Facilities paid for were never started or finished by contractors.
Shows how contractors made off with billions in US and Iraqi money. Contracts were awarded jobs and would be payed to replace much cheaper government or military personnel...
Ex: It showed how a Radio repair person working for the US army who made around 35k a year was replaced with someone from Haliburton that was charging upwards of over 100k per year!
Haliburton was charging 50$ per load of laundry for the US military.
One independent contractor managed to basically get the entire funding for a construction group and had no startup capital whatsoever. The US military paid him whatever he asked and asked no questions at all.
Another was a massive water distillation plant that was supposed to be rebuilt but since no electric was supplied the contractors sat on their hands and collected pay for essentially doing nothing...
Just tons of things that Americans and Iraqis are still to this day paying for that are costing their tax payers billions upon billions.
out there about Halliburton alone. One I particularly liked involved the "cost plus" reimbursement by the government...For any losses, Halliburton would get the cost covered plus a profit. For instance, if a truck had trouble, rather than fix the truck, they would junk it. They could replace it and they were paid not only for the cost of the truck but also extra profit for them. The policy actually encouraged them to just destroy property.
i would gander to say probably not. wouldn't it make sense that he did a good C.Y.A. job after he finished up? it doesnt make sense to tromp on everything the way he did, and not have some sort of ace in the hole.
Obama has literally filled his cabinet with Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commision, and Bilderberg group attendee's. These people not only follow but in many cases actually create the agenda which the Bush admin followed.
Obama's current administration is nothing more than a group of Wall St crooks, and you expect them to conduct a fair, second investigation into their own shennanigans?
All these crooks and liars are only good at one thing; keeping their hands clean. Now they've shifted all the blame for the past eight years onto their lackey Bush they can continue the same military-industrial policy that the US has been on for a long time.
Read Vonnegut: those people are the archetype of the modern "American way." Why shouldn't they exploit a system that allows itself to be exlpoited, if there are no penalties to pay?
I appreciate your response and I agree with your sentiment. I pointed my question at my friend Ben because he knows much more about our President than I do and as such I want to know what his feelings are on this matter.
How dare you. How dare you insinuate that the contractors there demolished their property in order to appropriate more funding!! Don't you even understand how ridiculous that sounds? Do you think they enjoyed ruining equipment or had fun getting shot at over there? I'm all for reigning in the corruption that plagued Iraq. But the due is not with the private contractors, the problem is with accountability within our government.
They let contractors get away with anything, and the public loses, not some company gains. If you want to attack something useful, tackle the corruption that permitted this embezzlement to happen, like stalled constructiion projects and things like that. I don't honestly believe the contractors needed to intentionally blow anything up over there to get more funding. With the spigot flowing as frely as it was that would have been completely unnecessary and over the top to do that. They risked their lives like the soliders did. It is a shame they were not held to a higher standard of accountability however. They had jobs which never seemed to have got done over there, and that's a problem that the GOA needed to stay on top of.
some of your previous comments on here have been so idiotic that I believed they were sarcastic so I did not respond to them. But since you are apparently serious, I will respond to this one. Did you understand what I posted? Halliburton got reimbursed for the destroyed equipment (which I'm sure they did not list as usable equipment that they destroyed) PLUS they were paid an additional amount beyond that. That is the meaning of "cost plus." That policy did lead the situation I described according to reports coming out of Iraq. You can just disbelieve the reports if you choose. You seem to think our patriotic contractors are over there risking life and limb for this country and would never think of doing such a thing. I am sorry to disabuse you of that notion but they have pulled a million scams over there and they have screwed over the American taxpayer completely for generations to come.
Here is one of them. I quote, "Rather than caring for its equipment, Halliburton bought new equipment and was reimbursed for the full cost, plus its additional ?cost-plus? percentage. With this incentive, Halliburton abandoned or destroyed $85,000 trucks if they got a flat tire or experienced mechanical problems, and never changed the oil." http://www.ourfuture.org/...
