Report: $138 Billion to Private Contractors During Iraq Occupation

Among the outrages of the American occupation of Iraq (don't kid yourself with any reference to a "coalition") was the scale of the monetary corruption. The principal beneficiaries of the financial largesse were various contractors. Notable among them was KBR, a former subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton.

US Senator Claire McCaskill
(photo: Wikipedia)

Thanks to the efforts of US Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and others, some of the truth about the shameful corruption is coming to light. According to a story in today's Financial Times, contractors who performed services in Iraq received at least $138 billion over the past ten years. (Many observers consider that figure a low estimate.) Nearly 30% of that money went to KBR, which supplied food and water for US troops. That's a lot of freeze-dried horse meat.

American conservatives, to their enduring shame, have never spoken out against the Bush-Cheney era corruption. They were on their heels from the start. Witness Neo-Con Paul Wolfowitz's 2003 comment that "we are dealing with a country (Iraq) that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." This fiscal disaster was compounded by the moral nightmare that Abu Ghraib epitomized and intellectual gangsters such as Wolfowitz enabled.

To this day, Americans largely don't want to face what happened in Iraq. They also don't have any inclination to confront the corruption that led to the financial collapse in 2007-2008. Today's ridiculous settlement between the Federal government and Citigroup over the firm's misrepresentation of subprime investments is merely the most recent, sorry exhibit.  Therefore, it's not surprising that the story about Iraq and the contractors appeared in a British newspaper. Americans, except for Claire McCaskill and some few intrepid others, just won't go there.