Ten years ago this month the United States and a coalition of like-minded Western countries launched a crusade against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. At the time, the U.S. administration of George W. Bush touted Saddam’s suspected possession of weapons of mass destruction and his regime’s purported links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist organization as justification for the invasion – both of which turned out not to be true and quite possibly known to be such by those arguing for war at the time.
The collapse of these two reasons for the war led the administration, in turn, to swiftly argue a third justification for the invasion – the democratization of Iraq and the reconstruction of the country after decades of brutal dictatorship, war and crippling economic sanctions.
This effort, aimed at re-engineering Iraqi society much in the same way Japan and Germany were rebuilt after World War II, was meant to simultaneously provide a better life for the Iraqi people and create the foundation for a strong and secure U.S.-Iraqi alliance going forward.
By almost any calculation this third effort – especially the physical reconstruction of Iraqi facilities and infrastructure – has turned out to be a boondoggle of such immense proportions that it staggers the imagination. So vast is the waste that it begs, nay screams, the question – why has no one of serious importance gone to jail for the immense fraud, corruption and outright theft of taxpayer dollars that was the U.S.-funded Iraqi reconstruction effort? That no one has, and, more importantly, that no one seems to care, speaks volumes about the health of American democracy.
Before turning to that grim assessment, however, it is enlightening to take in the sheer extent of the abuse that Iraqi reconstruction entailed. U.S. taxpayer monies, in theory, were to be used to fund the rebuilding of schools, prisons, roads and other elements of Iraqi physical infrastructure necessary for the proper functioning of society. Also included were monies allocated to rebuild and re-equip Iraq military and internal security forces, and so-called “commanders’ funds,” which could be used by local U.S. military officials on the ground to grease the wheels of progress at the local level. All told, the U.S. Congress authorized, since the spring of 2003, a total of $60 billion to be used to fund Iraq reconstruction.
If this outlay of funds had been used wisely and efficiently, much good could have been done. Money could have been injected into a crippled society at a critical point in its history when so very much – for both Iraqis and Americans – was riding on the outcome. Used properly, this money might have turned a half-baked invasion premised on falsehoods into something the American people could look back at with some degree of pride. We may have been “wrong” – but at least if these funds had gone to the right places Americans could say we at least did well by our mistake despite the blood and sacrifice it entailed. Maybe, just maybe, a fair, efficient, and effective post-war occupation and reconstruction effort could have turned Iraq in a better place.
We did not get that, because, almost from the beginning, these funds were funneled into a system so inefficient and lacking in accountability that, according to the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s (SIGIR) final report, nearly $8 billion of that $60 billion – or about 13 percent – was wasted outright.
That number, adds the man in charge of compiling the litany of fraud and abuse that is the report, Stuart Brown, is a “conservative” one, as his understaffed and overwhelmed office could audit and investigate only a tiny fraction of the 90,000 items for which contracts were doled out by U.S. authorities.
Indeed, by SIGIR’s own admission, data for approximately 15 percent of all U.S. reconstruction contracts are so sparse and poorly documented that taxpayers will never find out what happened to large portions of the $60 billion allocated by Congress. What SIGIR able to turn up, however, points to a veritable, in the words of the SIGIR report, “free fraud zone” when it came to spending U.S. taxpayer money.
As a case in point, consider the example of what the SIGIR report refers to as the “Cockerham Conspiracy” – a criminal endeavor led by U.S. Army Major John L. Cockerham, a contracting officer in charge of supply contracts at the U.S. military’s primary logistics hub in Kuwait. Cockerham was eventually sentenced to nearly 18 years in prison for taking more than $9 million in bribes and kickbacks from corrupt contractors in exchange for awarding contracts for the supply of bottled water and other incidentals to U.S. troops in the field between 2004 and 2005. Investigators eventually brought to heel an entire bribery ring centered on Cockerham, which included not only the Major, but his wife, sister, niece, a former Army Lieutenant Colonel, three former Army Majors, and a slew of contractors, associated family members and lower-ranking enlisted personnel.
Then there are cases like the ill-fated water projects dotted throughout Iraq that was meant to use U.S. money to bring the Iraqi desert to life. Among the most infamous of these often corruption-riddled, ill-managed and ineptly implemented projects was the U.S.-financed effort to reconstruct the city of Fallujah’s waste water treatment system.
Originally slated to cost only $35 million and take 18 months to complete, the project was meant to clear the city’s streets of raw sewage and bring potable water to 100,000 residents. It was, in short, a hearts-and-minds project critical to U.S. success in a volatile city at the very center of anti-U.S. insurgent activity.
As of 2011, however, violence, insecurity and mismanagement by both U.S. and Iraqi officials meant the program had ballooned in cost, increasing to $108 million in the space of eight years, yet having failed to provide much in the way of clean water for the city’s residents.
In 2011, when an Inspector General’s audit examined the project, the number of contractors associated with the project had exploded from one in 2004 to 42 eight years later. Instead of serving 100,000 or more residents, water service had been provided for only 38,000 residents, with completion expected in 2014 at an additional cost of $87 million on top of what has already been expended.
In another example of waste, this time from the Iraqi oil and gas sector — which U.S. occupation and reconstruction authorities gave high priority to – the critical Al-Fatah Bridge in north-central Iraq, a major oil and transport artery over the Tigris River, needed to be rebuilt after being bombed by U.S. forces in 2003. Given its importance, the sad tale of the Iraqi bridge to nowhere exemplifies U.S.-led reconstruction efforts in the country. Originally estimated to cost only $5 million and likely to be repaired within a matter of months, incompetence – or corruption – led to improper engineering specifications being adopted for the bridge repairs that ensured a fruitless effort ensued.
While doing little to help build the bridge, the new plans did, however, increase the estimated project cost to $28 million – which was a small fraction of $75 million the United States ultimately spent on this particular project. So inept was the construction, however, that auditors deemed only 28 percent of the work complete – forcing the U.S. government, after years and tens-of-millions-of-dollars-worth of wasted effort, to rebid the bridge’s reconstruction under a different, $30 million contract. A bridge that should have cost $5 million and been bearing traffic within a few months instead increased in cost to over $100 million and, after years of work, has still not been completed.
Among the worst problems, though, were found in contracts dealing with building up and sustaining Iraqi security forces. One contract, for instance, awarded a “Global Maintenance and Supply Services” contract to AECOM Government Services, a politically-connected U.S. engineering and defense “services” firm. The contract gave the company sole responsibility for overseeing logistics operations for the reconstituted Iraqi Army and other Iraqi security force elements to the tune of $1.1 billion. However, audits conducted by SIGIR found numerous financial irregularities and accounting problems that meant it was effectively impossible to reconcile company costs against expenditure – creating a situation almost tailor-made for expense padding and outright fraud.
To give an example of what was found, however, consider AECOM’s documented, exorbitantly overcharged bill for routine items like replacement parts. In one case, AECOM was found to have charged $237 for a vehicle mirrors costing only $14.88. The company also submitted invoices to seeking reimbursements of $196.50 for a bag of 10 washers costing only $1.22, $10 for a 45-cent fuse, and $210 for an inner tube that was supposed to cost $24.09.
In all, these assessed charges by AECOM represented cost inflations on cheap, commonly available items on the order of several thousand percent. Since these purchases were made on behalf of the Iraqi armed forces and reimbursed by the U.S. military with little in the way of oversight, Iraqis had no incentive to contain costs and huge incentives to look the other waywhen shoddy, overpriced weapons and equipment were provided by U.S. firms. Indeed, given that corrupt practices, legal or otherwise, are standard practice in the defense industry, there is little doubt that huge amounts were lost due to outright fraud and corruption.
Thus, from hospitals, prisons, oil pipelines, and waste-treatment facilities to the material and services used to equip and supply reconstituted Iraqi security forces, loose to non-existent oversight of funds in an active war zone led to a complete lack of accountability in nearly every field of endeavor.
Money was not just lost in Iraq. It was frittered away in amounts inconceivable to ordinary Americans. In total, from the invasion in 2003 till now, U.S. taxpayers spent approximately $15 million a day on reconstruction efforts with very little to show for it except shoddily built buildings, an Iraqi military largely dependent upon U.S. contractors to sustain itself, endemic insecurity, a seething population, a government increasingly aligned with Iran, and the creation of an immensely rich class of war profiteers, both US and Iraqi, that has made a bundle off of every bullet fired and brick laid on behalf of the American public in that sorry country since 2003.
What is worse, however, is the deafening silence which has accompanied SIGIR’s final report and the seeming impunity with which major players – such as U.S. general officers, corporate executives, and political officials – who should have known, indeed likely did know, about such rampant waste and corruption, but did nothing. Whether through incompetence, fear or greed, these individuals not only allowed a massive theft to take place, but one which weakened U.S. interests in Iraq and around the world. Every misallocated, stolen and wasted dollar is, in the end, a mockery of the immense sacrifices paid by U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike for a war that never should have happened in the first place.
Sadly, no one, except for a limited coterie of relatively low-ranking officers, bureaucrats and companies unlucky enough to not have the right political connections will pay a price for it, either, for no one seems to care. An analysis of media coverage conducted by Media Matters for America shows that SIGIR’s report, like much else about the Iraq War, has been effectively flushed down the U.S. media’s memory hole. MMA reports that in the five days that proceeded the release of the SIGIR report, when media interest in the subject could be expected to be at its highest, U.S. media outlets combined dedicated less than 30 minutes to the subject, with most coverage coming overwhelmingly from two outlets – PBS, which spent a total of 12 minutes and 10 seconds on the story, and MSNBC, which spent nearly 11 minutes. As for the rest, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN – all reputedly places where public-interest journalism takes place – devoted a total of 35 seconds to the story over the course of five days.
This story paints a devastating picture of the state of American democracy in the early 21st century. We live in a country where more media time is devoted to spoon-feeding low- brow entertainment, celebrity gossip, sports news and partisan shouting matches to an ignorant, increasingly polarized and yet apathetic public than to an honest assessment of one of the biggest, costliest foreign policy fiascos in U.S. history. We live in a country where waste and corruption on a grand scale can not only be ignored by everyone that counts, but in one where such crimes are literally forgotten about because it is in everyone’s interest to do so.
Our country is one where the revolving door between the government and the private sector is so seamless that few, if any, remark upon it any longer, and our big banks and politically-connected defense contractors are not only too big to fail, but also too big to prosecute or otherwise hold to account. We live in a country where one major political party can orchestrate a disaster like Iraq or the bank bailout while the other, bought off by the same corporate cash, largely looks the other way – sure in the knowledge that if they play dumb long enough they’ll eventually receive similar rewards once they, too, are in office.
Whatever it is we have become, it is not a democracy as prior generations might have understood it. Democracy in the final analysis requires accountability – either electoral or legal – to be attached to the use of power.
What is clear from the last decade, however, is that sitting above our political system and its two parties and creaking institutions is a vast, interconnected system of corporate interests so wealthy and powerful that, like Zeus on Olympus, it is practically unassailable. It can, with little effort, suborn almost any public endeavor into a scheme to enrich private, corporate actors. It does not control the government, it effectively is the government or so close as to make no difference.