A new commission examining waste and corruption in wartime contracts is getting a grim report from government watchdogs who say poor planning, weak oversight and greed combined to soak U.S. taxpayers and undermine American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly $51 billion for a wide array of projects in Iraq — from training the Iraqi army and police to rebuilding the country's oil, electric, justice, health and transportation sectors.
Were we unprepared for this task? Yes. We assumed little rebuilding would be necessary because we planned to avoid destroying Iraq's infrastructure during the major combat operations phase of the war. We succeeded in this. But we didn't know how bad the infrastructure was under Saddam's decades of misrule. There was a lot to build--not rebuild--and then terrorism on a massive scale required us to rebuild what the terrorists wrecked on top of the mess Saddam left us.
Yet let's not get too carried away in this exercise. If there was fraud, by all means prosecute the guilty. But in a counter-insurgency, money is ammunition. We should not question it in terms of effect by examining efficiency. Do we examine whether expenditures of ammunition was necessary? No. And nobody raises a stink if an infantry platoon burns through ammunition and calls in fire support to nail a single sniper in a building. It was necessary to spend money in Iraq to undermine the insurgents' appeal and nullify terror damage. Slowing down that expenditure to rigorously account for the money before spending it would have hampered the war effort.
We won the war (it seems), people. Let's not get too bent out of shape about the cost over 6 years when we are planning to burn money in our own country at a far higher rate. I wonder how the accounting report on that will look in five years? And so much for the Left's argument that spending on Iraq prevented us from spending money here at home!
Exactly how many people are still up in arms over that World War II spending audit that this commission was modeled after? A little perspective, please. That's all I ever really ask.
