Return to Article: Report: Defense Department cannot fully account for $7.8B spent in Iraq
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64184
Why should I pay back taxes when my government has already lost $7.8B? If there is no financial accountability with the taxes I have paid in the past, then it seems to me that I have been robbed. The Bush Administration has reneged its' fiduciary duty to prevent misappropriation of funds entrusted to it by its' citizens.
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51470
I can't believe the accounting procedures that are used to keep track of payments. I understand that there are cases when cash payements are needed to pay for services but there needs to be an accounting line made in a ledger for each transaction regarless of the form of payment. This is ridiculous.
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51448
OK!! Let me get this right. I am a single grandparent, raising my 12 year old grandson. Plus supporting and taking care of my 80 year old mother who lives with us. Working two jobs!! Can barely buy food, gas or anything else. Everything keeps going up except the money I make. And you are telling me you can't find $7.8B that you sent to another country, not even spending it in the United States. OK!! This crap has got to stop.
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51242
Just one more notch in the belt of the most corrupt administration in history. Just look at the mess they have left the next administration to deal with. How could anyone support another Republican with a record like this one ?
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51232
Abiguity, confustication, political expediency, and omission are handy tools when you want to deliver funds to corrupt officials in the guise of "official payments." We will never see this money again, and it is us the American people who pay, and pay. Where are Robin Hood and Zorro when you need them?
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51231
Those individuals who signed for the money should be held accountable...from the bottom up!
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51229
For the most part, Cogress and the Army have only themselves to blame. In the 90's they cut the acquisition workforce back to unacceptable levels, then sent a small cadre of undertrained, overworked personnel to do the impossible workload on an immediate basis. Discounting the "bad apples" that need prosecuted, you had a workforce asked to do the impossible immediately and to document everything but what color underwear they were wearing on the day the did the action; and if they left out describing the tee-shirt then their documentation was deemed "incomplete" and therefore they did not know what they were spending the taxpayer dollars on. It is a wonder that any acquisition personnel are left.
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51228
I'm a young fed PM, and in my office, in order to get projects approved, we're pretty much to the point where you need to be able to prove that someone's going to get thrown in jail if you don't meet the legal requirement. (and even if it's approved, you may still not get funded) You may have a great idea that will save taxpayers thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars (that's still a lot of money in my book), but you'd have a better chance of selling ice cubes to an eskimo than getting it funded. THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. I know of a contracting agency that boasts about how much money it puts out on contract (hundreds of millions) with the fewest amount of PMs as if that's some sign of accomplishment...not one mention of what was actually accomplished with this money. Here I am, a vet with a hard earned engineering degree at one of the nation's top universities, and I'm spending my kids college savings to fill my gas tank and buy groceries, makes me sick.
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51225
This is not only for Iraq, we have too many inexperience managers with inflated resumes in the federal workforce that are charged with overseeing gigantic financial portfolios and they will do anything that is convenient or that seems to be right in their worlds. However, they will not invest in their staff or allow staff access to the appropriate training to better their performance because they want to "control" spending or the potential growth of the employee. Go figure!
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51223
The politicians trying to rack up election year political capital by wringing their hands over this latest "scandal" are the same ones who criticized FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew for delays in payments to disaster victims, insisted on expedited payments after Katrina, and the criticized FEMA for improper payments to Katrina victims who had not provided "adequate" documentation.
Very little gets done in a war zone if nothing can be done without "adequate documentation." The most effective actions are often the most timely actions. See Bob Woodward's book, "State of Denial" for a discussion of the effectiveness of CERP payments in advancing reconstruction efforts in Iraq.
I wonder how many of the current chorus of critics could provide "adequate documentation" of all the expenditures from their campaign accounts if they were held to DFAS standards.
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51221
Now all we need is for someone to chime in about how great a job our M.B.A. president is doing in getting everything squared away $$ wise.
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51215
Yes Hermy. Only time they will pay attention if it hurts them in the pocket. We have investigations, find out abuses and then nothig happens to hold the responsible party accountable. Make the reponsible people pay. Whatever amount out of their paycheck. Don' fire them, make them work and pay. Not just a slap on wrist and say don't do this, and "they" say OK i will not They have an absolute disregard for the public money. It is appaling and so easy to do...
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51213
Crap like this has been the NORM for years! Somethings just never change in the DOD. You can bet that the DOD ain't the only agency either!
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51208
I think we are lucky. It could have been worse. Maybe the cheal Iraq oil will smooth things over.
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51203
Typical bean counter hogwash... Extrapolate to arrive at a number which means we're too lazy to do our jobs so lets just pull a number out of a hat. They didn't say what the $11M was for and depending on the expense it may not have had a lot of back-up, did they even ask the folks you requested the money?? Sounds like another shoddy gov't investigation. Why hasn't anyone been put in New Orleans for theft? More than $2B was stolen by folks filing false claims where is the outrage and investigations
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51197
To quote one of our public officials "So?" When is the last time DoD passed an audit? In August 2001, they reported over $2 trillion missing. That story was overtaken by events. The accounting system is another part of the infrastructure that has been neglected. Most of that is not up to the government's CMM Level IV standard for automated systems. The historic irony is that Congress authorized automating payroll and accounting back in the 60's so they would have a real time balance sheet, knowing the exact amount of money being spent by the Defense Department.
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51196
Well "DUH!" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where the money is going. When the current administration authorized the "No-Bid" contract, as illegal as it was, it opened a Pandora's Box to bilking the government for billion. Albeit, sloppy project management, by all departments, has also added to the chaotic situation in Iraq and the only way to get a handle on it is to temporarily stop all payments until project management and accounting personnel are retrained. However, I'm sure that there were some that questioned the invoices, but were instructed to "Pay it anyway." That seems to be the way the government and DoD works. It's so sad that the American tax payers have to foot the bill.
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51191
How can a department of such "high standing" do something so stupid. If you apply for any kind of assistance (heat, food, electricity, etc) you have to have documents that almost gives them your life history. Here they are just giving the taxpayers money away and they have the nerve to ask for more.
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51187
Only the US government can get away with shennanigans like this. Private/Public companies that like to "cook their books" such as this do not exist for long. Can you say Enron? The investors lost faith in the system and Enron went under. I lose more and more faith in the US government daily and only see Rome falling eventually. Shameful.
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51185
This is what happens when you try to do too much with too little and without experienced people. In a war zone or not.
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51183
Congress should cut the next DoD budget by $7.8B and do the same thing anytime taxpayer money can't be properly accounted for.
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