Audit: ‘Disarray’ on $1.2 billion Iraq contract

U.S. can’t account for DynCorp performance in training police, report says

Just as the State Department is trying to work its way clear of its Blackwater troubles, a scathing federal audit released Tuesday exposes a glaring lapse in oversight of another federal contractor in Iraq, DynCorp. DynCorp was supposed to train and equip Iraqi police, but the report says the State Department doesn’t know how most of the money in the billion-plus-dollar program was spent.

The State Department “does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program,” the audit says. The federal watchdogs, with the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR, said that they even had to suspend their audit because there wasn’t enough data to check the books, which were in “disarray.”

DynCorp’s contract was part of the U.S. strategy to arm and train a new Iraqi police force in the wake of the 2003 invasion. Training the police was a key part of the Bush administration’s efforts in Iraq. The training was considered crucial because police are often unable to withstand insurgent attacks, and are considered penetrated by various militias.

If you look in your Funk & Wagnalls for the definition of utter disarray you’ll find a footnote saying, see ‘Bush Administration’ and another similar entry saying, ‘Bush in Iraq’…

I shouldn’t make lite of this I suppose, the success of the Iraqi army and police, and their ability to stand up on their own is, according to Bush himself, the deciding factor as to when or IF our troops ever get to come home and I for 1 have said for quite some time, the Iraqi army and police can’t stand on their own simply because they are too infiltrated with Islamic insurgents and militias, well, lo and behold, a study comes out saying the same thing, I’ll bet that is really tweaking a few noses…

But, it also appears that the inability of the Iraqis to stand up may not be all their fault, maybe DynCorp screwed the pooch, maybe the Iraqis aren’t trainable, maybe the State Department just totally lost the handle on the operation,, perhaps it’s a combination of all of the above, who knows, but it looks like we have another few billion of our tax dollars thrown down the drain with nothing to show for it except some lighter pockets for OUR effort…

If the information in the MSNBC story is accurate it serves to point out once again that Iraq has been a mismanaged and micromanaged disaster, one that is killing our troops for NO good reason and killing the American taxpayer in the process…

Bowen’s auditors said the environment was “ripe for waste and fraud.” DynCorp’s invoices had numerous problems, such as duplicate payments. Auditors also reported on the “the purchase of a $1.8 million X-ray scanner that was never used, and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorp officials in hotels in Iraq rather than in existing living facilities.” (A State Department spokesperson disputes that, in part, and says the unused X-ray scanner and hotels were in Afghanistan rather than Iraq.) Bowen says the State Department says it will try to organize its books so that the auditors can come back at the end of the year and try again.

If you’re in business with someone and you KNOW that they are cooking the books, what do you do?? You dump em like a hot potato, you bring charges, you prosecute, you try and recoup some of your losses, but you don’t let them just keep on running the operation for you, all the while allowing them to find new and more efficient ways to screw you over even more…

In a letter responding to the audit, the Acting Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s INL wrote that it “will take three to five years” to “fully review and validate invoices” for pre-October 2006 work. The letter points out that there have been vast improvements. Bowen, the IG, agreed.

And there goes even MORE millions upon millions of our tax dollars in an attempt to find out who spent what and what did the buy, but there have been vast improvements?? Why was there no oversight of these expenditures to begin with?? What did State do?? Just write the checks and tell DynCorp to go play and have a good time??

There has always been acts of profiteering in war time, always will be, but to let it happen simply because the U.S. government is too lazy to police itself is simply ridiculous…

Full Story Here:
‘Disarray’ on $1.2 billion Iraq contract

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