Right Thinking From The Left Coast
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The $8.7 Billion Hole
by Hal_10000

What?

A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It’s cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

“Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money,” said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money “should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation.”

To quote P. J. O’Rourke, how do you “lose” $8.7 billion?  Did they check under the couch cushions?

The deal here is that the US was allowed to tap money put into the Iraq Development fund, which is run by the UN.  The US took about $20 billion out and this audit, which covers the $9.1 billion spent from 2004 to 2007, showed that the spending was simply not documented.

Between Iraq and Afghanistan, we have poured $100 billion into reconstruction, with little to show for it.  Part of this is the basic incompetence of the last Administration’s reconstruction efforts, as documented in Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book.  And part of this is just the fundamental problem of nation building in nations that weren’t terribly built in the first place.  There’s a part of me that thinks we should still keep trying to fix these countries.  But there’s a growing part that thinks this would be just throwing good money after bad.

Posted by Hal_10000 on 07/28/10 at 04:20 PM (Discuss this in the forums)

Comments


Posted by on 07/28/10 at 06:40 PM from United States

But there’s a growing part that thinks this would be just throwing good money after bad.

You may want to stick with this part, because it will be the ultimate conclusion eventually. I’ve said it here for years. We need to get out of the nation building business. Go to war only when absolutely needed. Beat the shit out of your enemy, and leave. That’s the only way to win a war if there must be one.

Posted by on 07/28/10 at 07:50 PM from Germany

"Nation Building” reminds me of that quote from Radio Vietnam: fighting for someone else’s freedom is like fucking for someone else’s virginity.

We need to abandon this particular strain of lunacy and get back to kicking ass, taking names, fucking their girlfriend and leaving.

Posted by AlexinCT on 07/29/10 at 07:00 AM from United States

To quote P. J. O’Rourke, how do you “lose” $8.7 billion?

My bet is that the bulk of this money, just like that in the stories of yore about the military spending $600 per toilet seat or $2000 per hammer that got the military hating idiot’s panties all in a bunch, ended up funding black ops. Being considered as wasteful and stupid when it comes to money, and then being able to blame it on that whole big government bureaucracy thing, sure as hell helps hide those projects you need to keep off the books. And the occasional black eye you take for the press when the discrepancies are pointed out isn’t that big of a deal all things considered. Unfortunately, though there is still a lot of waste, but nothing coming close to that wasted by the “social justice” arm of government.

We need to abandon this particular strain of lunacy and get back to kicking ass, taking names, fucking their girlfriend and leaving.

As long as we keep thinking that war has to become more civilized and that you should be able to fight it without human casualties, we are screwed. Nation building really only works when you decimate the population and completely destroy their will to resist, like happened in WWII with the Axis nations. In general the correct strategy to avoid future problems with an enemy that was not going away, was to do what the Romans did to Cartage after they had to endure a third war. The sad thing I see is that while the West, now that it has attained a standard of living far beyond anything civilized man could dream of, seems to have lost the will to do something like this, while our enemies - both the foreign ones and the domestic ones - have become more bloodthirsty and willing to do this to us than ever. Makes you wonder if being “civilized” doesn’t doom civilizations in the first place.

Posted by Ed Kline on 07/30/10 at 10:43 AM from United States

There’s a part of me that thinks we should still keep trying to fix these countries.  But there’s a growing part that thinks this would be just throwing good money after bad.

The world will make you a libertarian yet Hal.

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