Provision in Iraq bill to shield reconstruction spending from US auditors

[BoomerD]

Sorry if this has already been posted. Didn't find it in a search, only some much earlier discussion ...

Found this posted on another forum, apparently from the Wall St. Journal, but you need a paid subscription.

Congress quietly adds provision to bar inspector general from auditing spending

"The Senate last week approved $109 billion in additional spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $1.5 billion in added Iraq reconstruction money," the Wall Street Journal begins in a page four story Wednesday. "The administration has spent $20.9 billion to reconstruct Iraq's infrastructure and modernize its oil industry, but the effort hasn't restored the country's electricity output, water supply or sewage capabilities to prewar levels."

Maybe someone wiht a subscription to the WSJ can find some more info
Writes the Journal: "A behind-the-scenes battle among legislators has made a crucial distinction between the new reconstruction money and that already spent: The new funds won't be overseen by the government watchdog charged with curbing the mismanagement that has overshadowed the reconstruction."

"Special inspector general, Stuart Bowen, who has 55 auditors on the ground in Iraq, will be barred from overseeing how the new money is spent," the Journal adds. "Instead, the funds will be overseen by the State Department's inspector general office, which has a much smaller staff in Iraq and warned in testimony to Congress in the fall that it lacked the resources to continue oversight activities in Iraq."

The move comes just two weeks after an American contractor was convicted for admitting a bribe-for-jobs scheme in Iraq.

Wrote the Washington Post in April: "As part of the plea, Philip H. Bloom admitted his part in a scheme to give more than $2 million in cash and gifts to U.S. officials in exchange for their help in getting reconstruction contracts for his companies. Bloom's firms won $8.6 million in reconstruction deals, with an average profit margin of more than 25 percent."

More arrests are likely, the Post added.

Again from the Journal: "Exactly how and why the change was made isn't clear. Republican Appropriations Committee aides say legislators shifted the Iraq money to the foreign operations accounts at the request of the White House, not to curb oversight. They say administration officials sought the change to streamline accounting so the Iraq reconstruction would be incorporated into the State Department's operations and budget rather than kept in stand-alone accounts."

The White House told the JOURNAL that requesting the new Iraq money from the government's foreign operations account is part of its "goal of normalizing our treatment of Iraq assistance."

 

[trenchfoot]

i fully agree with the bush administration's attempt at controlling costs: "if you can't control it, hide it."

or, in the more likely case they're doing it to hide the rampant corruption now going on in iraq in regard to bush and cheney's friends feeding frenzy on the taxpayer money that is being loaned to us by china: "if it's a nuisance and a crime to hide the graft and theft of the taxpayer's monies from said taxpayers, then make hiding the crimes legal through secret legislation."

it's par for the course for the bush administration where the public's right to know is the public's problem, not theirs.

 

[magomago]

beyond the fact that any senator who sponsored or co sponsered this bill should be tried for reason, any senator or representative who says "yes" on this bill should lose their position.

 

[Jeff7]

Let this go ahead, let all the corrupt contractors and such move into Iraq, then start another major bombing campaign. Maybe do it too sometime when the senators are surveying the area.