BBC: $23 BILLION disappeared in Iraq funding

A BBC investigation into the mysterious financial black hole known as the Iraq invasion has just been released. Not surprisingly, Bush's contractor buddies ripped off taxpayers for multiple billions, and the Administration has issued orders to prevent further investigation. Are we now to 'discover' that the BBC is part of the "Far Left" that no longer takes every single utterance of the Decider as gospel truth? Perhaps.
The Republicans have created a weird "rule" that allows any facts to be dismissed out of hand based on the putative and alleged association of the source with anyone who disagrees with the Administration. Perhaps some investigator's spouse once attended a conference in which someone else said something critical of the Bush Administration; obviously the entire report can then be cast as the work of "Bush haters". The only people who can say anything critical of the Administration are those within it, and in this case, they are dismissed as "traitors".

Story from the BBC:

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.
A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.
The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

War profiteering
While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.
To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.
The president's Democrat opponents are keeping up the pressure over war profiteering in Iraq.
Henry Waxman who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said: "The money that's gone into waste, fraud and abuse under these contracts is just so outrageous, its egregious.
"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."

Why is the Bush Administration preventing any investigation into this? Will "the terrorists" somehow benefit by a public revelation of where these billions went? Perhaps, since the Bush Administration has continually equated those who criticise both the cost and pretext of the invasion as "terrorist sympathisers", they may make an extremely flimsy case based on 'national security'. In other words, if the public knew what went on behind the scenes, they would be opposed to the Iraq effort, and that would make us less safe as a nation. Of course, that ship has sailed, with over 2/3 of Americans now saying the whole thing was a mistake. But it doesn't have to make sense for the Administration to use it as a justification.

The truth is that the Administration is preventing the investigation of these allegations so that more evidence can disappear: hard drives erased, documents "mistakenly" discarded, suppressed audits classified as secret for decades, etc.

Again and again we have heard stories of how the Administration has actively blocked investigations of corruption within the Iraqi government as well. While promoting and crowing about the efforts of an "anti-corruption team" into Iraqi ministries, the Administration was simultaneously severely limiting what this "team" of two men could investigate. The result was that they could investigate nothing, and they sat playing computer games for months while Bush claimed credit for their "work". Several stories have also come out regarding arms purchases, where the U.S. or Iraqi government was billed for brand-new, high quality equipment only to receive used, out-dated, or broken equipment instead, with the difference going into a crony's pocket. The BBC investigation uncovers another case of just this kind of abuse:

He and his associates siphoned an estimated $1.2 billion out of the ministry.
They bought old military equipment from Poland but claimed for top class weapons.
Meanwhile they diverted money into their own accounts.

It is truly staggering that Republicans can cry shrilly about "earmarks" and "pork", while at the same time blocking investigations of over $23 billion in fraud in invasion and occupation expenditures. The justification is that there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Why is there no evidence of wrongdoing? Because the Bush Administration has continually prevented any investigations based on unprecedented secrecy. Thus, the Republicans claim this is merely an example of the "criminalisation of politics", in which poor Republican operatives are being persecuted for being on the wrong side of the Aisle.

When one starts with the premise that the Republicans and their minions can do no wrong, it is very easy to justify stonewalling investigations. And once something is investigated, it is suddenly "in the past" and it is time to "move on" and "put it behind us". Of course, this is only a last-resort position, because the first line of defence is always that the investigators are biased. In other words, the investigators did not decide at the outset that nothing wrong was done, or that the investigators had been critical of some aspect of the invasion and occupation in the past, making them obviously part of the vaguely-defined "Far Left".

The GOP had better brace itself for a steady stream of this kind of revelation for years to come once Bush leaves office. Their traditionally weak defence is only effective on the faithful, and only possible with the complicity of the Executive to conceal facts. Mid-term elections will feature Republican sound bites of unswerving loyalty to Bush contrasted with revelations of corruption that they defied anyone to investigate.