Billions Wasted In Iraq

CPA senior adviser Franklin Willis (center) and a couple of buddies on 'pay day' "We called Mike Battles in and said, 'Bring a bag'," Willis told Congress American Military Deaths Traced Directly to Corruption

"Some $8.8 billion dispersed for reconstruction efforts in Iraq is unaccounted for, says the U.S. official in charge of tracing it. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says $8.8 billion is unaccounted for because oversight on the part of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the entity governing Iraq after the war, "was relatively nonexistent." The former No. 2 man at the Coalition's transportation ministry, Frank Willis, concurs. "I would describe (the accounting system) as nonexistent." Such an atmosphere made it possible for billions to go missing and companies to defraud the Coalition. Custer Battles, a company quickly formed after the war to get reconstruction contracts, goes on trial next week, accused in a whistleblower suit by an ex-employee of bilking the U.S. government out of $50 million. "(Custer Battles) wanted to open fraudulent companies overseas and inflate their invoices to the U.S. government," says the whistleblower, Robert Isakson. He says he refused to go along with the scheme and "two weeks later, apparently I heard they began exactly the fraud they described to me," he tells CBS's Steve Kroft. Willis remembers Custer Battles, which was formed by former Army Ranger Scott Custer and a failed congressional candidate, Mike Battles, who claimed to be active in the Republican Party and have connections to the White House".

Why did you know that the owners of 'Custer-Battles' would be Republican? Getting better at figuring that out, are you? And of course, what would a good Republican scandal be without assistance from Fox News? Seems that Mike Battles was a frequent guest on Fox when it came to issues on how to make a killing on war profiteering in Iraq. If you remember, Fox News was all over the 'Oil for Food' scandal for months; a scandal not involving U.S. money or lives. But Fox doesn't talk much about these scandals from Republican cronies, some of the same cronies who actually appear as their special guests. And these scandals with the 'Iraqi reconstruction' are stealing directly from U.S. taxpayers and helping to foment the anger that kills our young in Iraq. You want to learn more, read about it here and watch it tomorrow night on 60 Minutes. Watch how the 'culture of corruption', the good old boy Bush/Cheney way of doing business is not only wasting billions of your dollars, but helping to kill your sons and daughters, too. Newsweek wrote on this also.