Ex- Bush aide turns critic on Iraq

[Roland99]

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Bush_aide_turns_critic_on__0726.html

The Wall Street Journal's first page Tuesday offers a detailed piece enumerating the concerns of a former Bush Administration aide and continued loyalist who has criticized the President's handling of Iraq reconstruction. The article tells of Stuart Bowen, "a Texas lawyer who parlayed a job on George W. Bush's first gubernatorial campaign into senior posts in Austin and Washington. He began the Iraq war lobbying for an American contractor seeking tens of millions of dollars in reconstruction work." Bowen was so seen as a part of the Bush machine that he was singled out by name in a report by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who worried about the politicization of Iraq inspectors general -- the job to which Bowen was appointed. Bowen also worked on the 2000 Florida recount team and served as associate counsel under Alberto Gonzales. The piece is worth reading in its entirety but is paid-restricted; RAW STORY has excerpted a few graphs below.
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Stuart Bowen discovered a U.S office in Iraq had paid a contractor twice for the same work. A U.S. official was allowed to handle millions of dollars in cash weeks after he was fired for incompetence. Of the $119.9 million allocated for regional projects, $89.4 million was disbursed without contracts or other documentation. An additional $7.2 million couldn't be found at all.

<...>

Mr. Bowen's audits later found evidence that a public relations push to use captured Iraqi money to build many small-scale rebuilding projects by the handover date led contracting officials to take shortcuts that made it difficult to determine where the money actually went. In Hillah, for instance, a contracting officer told Mr. Bowen's investigators that he had been given $6.75 million in cash on June 21 with the expectation that he would spend the entire amount before the handover, which ultimately took place two days earlier than planned on June 28.

In one of his most attention-grabbing reports, issued on Jan. 30, 2005, Mr. Bowen concluded that the American occupation authority failed to keep track of nearly $9 billion that it transferred to Iraqi government ministries, which lacked financial controls and internal safeguards to prevent abuse. One Iraqi ministry cited in the audit inflated its payroll to receive extra funds, claiming to employ 8,206 guards when it actually employed barely 600.

[msongs]

1. those good old republican family values :-) nt

[jojo54]

2. Now, something like this story makes me wonder just how much

of our hard earned tax dollars that have been unaccounted for, fell into the wrong hands??? HHMMMMM.........

[Roland99]

4. The Iraqi gov't has been inflitrated by insurgents from the get-go

so I'd say a pretty good-sized chunk.

[rasputin1952]

3. Could you imagine the outrage if the ultra-wealthy still paid taxes

for the war they clamored for?

But it is the poor and the Middle class who are paying for this, so no one will squeal....:grr:

It shows us just how far from decency and honor this administration is....I'm sure that the distance from reality helps in the rationalization by the administration that this is 'business as usual'....:puke: