Pacific Views

Where Is All The Money Going?

The war in Iraq stands out from earlier wars in the last fifty years because the overall costs of the war have been truly astronomical. For a war that was going to pay for itself, the latest headlines now reveal that the Iraq war has been the costliest war in US history. And when you look at the money that was allocated to rebuild Iraq, recent investigations have shown that literally billions of dollars have disappeared into someone's pocket without any value to the Iraqis or the US. Iraq is the poster child of outright corruption by those we put in charge and a total ripoff for the American taxpayers.

When looking into the Cunningham corruption scandal, I found Joseph Cannon asking a very good question about the secret wars our government has sponsored in the 1980s: How much money did the contras need? Were they firing gold bullets down there?.

Indeed. And that was child's play for what is going on today.

In our Iraq war, one of the unstated, yet increasingly obvious goals of the Bush administration was to provide a foolproof method of funnelling American taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the well-connected. Thus, they encouraged the privatization of many of the essential support services for the US military such as supplying water and food for the troops or providing security guards for American officials on duty in Iraq. Yet, these privatized services have cost significantly more than anyone would think is a fair market value. Just like the $900 toilet seat of a couple of decades ago, today we have expensive bottles of water some of which we now know have been so polluted that they have poisoned our troops. Yet, the money keeps flowing.

Who are they paying? And how much are they getting from us? Well, one way we can find out is by supporting Robert Greenwald's latest documentary: Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. If you are tired of having our tax dollars simply disappearing down a black hole and not knowing that what we've spent has been used effectively, please help Greenwald with putting the facts on film.

(h/t to FDL)

Posted by Mary at April 27, 2006 07:11 AM | Iraq | TrackBack(2) | Technorati links |