U.S. Iraq reconstruction wasted over $8 billion

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:25:00 +0000

The ten-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion looms, carrying with it a legacy of unjustified occupation and botched reconstruction. As Spencer Ackerman at Wired points out Wednesday, of the $60 billion the U.S. poured into reconstruction efforts,"$8 billion of that money wasted outright." These are not Ackerman's estimations -- these were the numbers given by Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), whose office released a "mammoth" report on Iraqi reconstruction programs "which cost the U.S. taxpayers, on average, $15 million every day from 2003 to 2012."

Bowen admits that the amount of "outright" waste probably far tops the $8 billion estimate. As Ackerman notes:

We couldn’t look at every project — that’s impossible — but our audits show a lack of accountability,” Bowen says. “We are not well structured to carry out stability and reconstruction operations.” That isn’t nearly the whole story of the Iraq War’s expense. Bowen is only looking at reconstruction money, not the cost of military operations in Iraq, which totaled over $800 billion.

Salon.com > SIGIR

U.S. Iraq reconstruction wasted over $8 billion