How Are The Funds Being Spent?

From the The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project (CSIS)

The substantial U.S. funding for the reconstruction effort in Iraq is expected to have a significant impact on the ground.¹ Our analysis, however, shows that the impact will be diffused in a number of ways.

estimated breakdown of costs for reconstruction activities in Iraq

The above chart is an estimated breakdown of costs for reconstruction activities in Iraq across government agencies, drawn from information concerning the spending of both the $18.4 billion and other U.S. reconstruction monies. These estimates are drawn from a variety of sources, including official audits, independent and government research, interviews with contractors and U.S. government personnel directly involved in Iraq’s reconstruction, and the media. Attaining exact estimates about the costs discussed here is not possible, given the dearth of publicly available information. There tends to be a wide divergence in estimates: for example, estimates of security costs range from 15-50 percent of total contract costs.² We chose low to mid-range estimates for purposes of compiling this report.

For an indepth look into the breakdown of costs for reconstruction in Iraq, and a overview of the project, please see the full report (pdf) and visit the The Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project (CSIS) website.

By Pratap Chatterjee, AlterNet
Posted on August 23, 2004

Missing: One giant generator owned by the United States military. Estimated cost: $734,863

Last seen: Somewhere in Iraq.

While much of the media is focused on the pitched battle over the control of the holy shrine in Najaf, a bigger scandal is brewing in Iraq that may well have an equally important effect on the future of the U.S. occupation.

A team of auditors was dispatched to Iraq in late January this year after a string of internal reports showed that the military was wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money. They have issued eleven reports since June 25, almost all of which have pointed to the misuse of the money allocated for reconstruction, be it Iraqi or Congress-appropriated funds.

According to two of these reports issued in late July by Stuart Bowen, the auditor-inspector general of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), not only have a full one-third of the items purchased by the Pentagon gone MIA (including the pricey generator), but a whopping. $1.9 billion or more of Iraqi oil revenue has also mysteriously disappeared.

Embarrassed military authorities did eventually track down the missing generator and much of the money, both of which seemed to have ended up with none other than Halliburton. As it turns out they weren’t missing after all; it’s just that Dick Cheney’s former employer had misplaced or conveniently forgotten to turn in the receipts to the correct people.

But the Pentagon was not able to explain just how Halliburton gained possession of Iraqi funds when neither the United States Congress nor the Iraqi government authorized their transfer to Halliburton in the first place. Worse yet, the man who authorized the allocation � CPA chief Paul Bremer � had already quietly left Iraq just as the reports were being released.

Yet days after the much-touted “transfer of sovereignty,” the White House revealed an even more startling detail about the reconstruction effort: In over a year, the CPA had managed to spend just 2 percent of the $18.4 billion earmarked for the immediate reconstruction of Iraq. And not a penny was spent on the two areas where the Iraqi people were suffering the most: healthcare or water and sanitation.

So what is really going on? Is the United States spending too much or too little money in Iraq?

Published on Thursday, July 15, 2004 by Newsday / Long Island, New York
Common Dreams
by Jimmy Breslin

In less than a month, there have been 37 same-sex deaths of our troops in Iraq. There is one woman, Army Spc. Julie Hickey, age 20, who died of illness on the Fourth of July. If the men were getting married, George Bush would shout more than ever for a constitutional amendment.

As they die in battle in the Middle East, Bush doesn’t even notice. This man of limited mind and unlimited arrogance is unmoved by deaths that have put blood on his hands for all time.

I want to tell you what it’s like to type this list of names that runs below. You keep typing these ages of “20″ and “19″ and “22″ and soon, you hear them. They are shouting over loud music. Laughing uncontrollably. Girls, girls, girls. Swearing viciously at their fates. And always with these young fast voices. Why should they die? What right have we to play God and send them to be blown to pieces? I finish typing this job and go to bed. These young should be living in the sounds of an American summer, of water rushing over rocks, or lapping a lakeshore pier, or crashing onto an ocean beach; of music in the soft nights or the elated cries of kids running through a field. If not a field, then enjoying nature’s finest sight, a crowded city street.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian court has ruled the United States should pay $600 million in compensation for supplying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday.

IRNA said the money in the case, brought by Iranian war veterans and disabled, should be paid to survivors of attacks on the town of Sardasht which borders Iraq.

Iraqi gas attacks killed thousands of Iranians and Iraqi Kurds in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands died on both sides and Iran has thousands disabled by chemical arms.

No further details were available and Iranian officials were unavailable for any immediate comment.

“The court has ordered the American government to pay the money for furnishing Saddam with chemical weapons to attack Iran,” IRNA reported.

The United States and Iran have been at odds since 1979 when more than 50 Americans were held hostage by Iranian student militants at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for 444 days after the Islamic revolution.

The verdict was submitted to the Swiss Embassy which has covered U.S. interests in Iran since Washington cut ties with Tehran in 1980.