(MintPress) — Recent audits suggesting the United States cannot account for $2 billion in Iraqi funds adds to a storyline of missing money under the watch of the U.S. Department of Defense. The most recent report details how the U.S. can only account for one-third of a $3 billion payment the Iraqi government gave the U.S. in 2004 to pay contract bills.
Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, testified last June that $6.6 billion went missing, and could have been stolen. The billions in unaccounted dollars add to a total that was already well into the billions years ago. In 2006, The Guardian detailed the lack of accountability and oversight involved with the allocation of funds.
Another investigation done in 2007 followed the money trail of $12 billion in Iraq. The money, shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, went to funding projects and ministries. However, that was only a small percentage of the total funds. The report detailed how an estimated $9 billion went missing in what the article described as “a frenzy of mismanagement and greed.”
In 2008, the BBC claimed that an investigation showed as much as $23 billion could not be accounted for in Iraq funding because of theft, poor accountability or because it had simply been lost.
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Useful dollars
The missing funds could have proven quite beneficial for the Iraqi people. Using the most recent figure of $2 billion that was unaccounted for, that money could provide ample infrastructure improvements in Iraq.
- A five-story, 400-bed hospital was built for $135 million last year in Qadisiya, a southern province in Iraq. $2 billion would provide enough funding for nearly 15 new hospitals with identical specs as the one built in Qadisiya.
- The Michigan Department of Transportation estimates the cost to build one mile of freeway through a rural area to be $8 million per mile. While costs may vary in Iraq, using that figure, Iraq could build 250 miles of rural freeway infrastructure.
- On the U.S. front, Pell Grants to help students in financial need to attend college averaged $3,685 per award in 2010. $2 billion could help 542,740 students attend a university for an academic year.
Source: MintPress