With the 2006 midterm elections just around the corner, let's delve into something about the Iraq Invasion that cannot be blamed on Bill Clinton—yes, I speak of the contractor fraud scandal. The waste, fraud and abuse by Americans and Coalition contractors that is going on in Iraq and which has been going on ever since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a disgrace. As of this writing, $9 billion have been looted from the U.S. Treasury and is simply missing. George Bush is himself complicit in the theft.

After the overthrow of Saddam in 2003, an interim government was set up in Iraq, mainly by the U.S. and Great Britain, with full executive, judicial and legislative powers. It was called the Coalition Provisional Authority or CPA. In May 2003, George Bush tapped Lewis Paul Bremer III to replace Jay Garner as head the CPA under the title of Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. Before leaving the post and the country of Iraq in June 2004, L. Paul Bremer would completely dismantle the Iraqi governmental infrastructure and completely gut its military force and destroy its media.

With no financial infrastructure or banking system left in Iraq after the CPA dismantling, there was no way to pay workers with checks, no way to transfer funds and no safe location to store them. Bremer requested $12 billion in cash from the U.S. Treasury, which Bush ordered to be appropriated (a blatantly illegal act since the president does not have this authority). The cash was sent to Iraq loaded onto palettes. The palettes were delivered to their destinations via truck. From there, the cash was simply handed out to contractors and government employees who kept hundreds of thousands of dollars in their footlockers which did not even have locks! One contractor, who served in Iraq at this time, referred to those heady days as "the Wild West." Contractors literally stuffed their pockets with the cash. Some, who tried to keep a good accounting of the money entrusted to them, often found their lockers had been looted by their less ethical but greedier colleagues who then simply left.

This is made all the more galling by the fact that Bremer's money was not supposed to come from American taxpayers but from Iraqi oil revenues as per United Nations Resolution 1483. Bremer was supposed to answer to the UN concerning how these revenues were being spent including a detailed accounting of the following:

·        Expenditures that were being used to benefit the Iraqi people.
·        The programs to receive funding were decided upon, and supervised in an open, transparent manner.
·        The CPA's hiring of a team of internal auditors that would set up and monitor an accounting system.
·        Iraqis that were invited to give meaningful input into how funds were to be spent.
·        How the administrator of Iraq (Bremer himself) was co-operating with the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB).
·        Proper fiscal controls that are in place so that Bremer could demonstrate that none of the funds were being diverted nor misspent.

All of these points were violated again and again under Bremer's auspices as Iraq's acting administrator. Although officially answerable in part to the U.N., Bremer answered only to Rumsfeld who showed no concern with postwar planning (even going so far as threatening to fire anybody at the Pentagon who dared to bring the subject up in his presence).

When IAMB external auditors arrived in Baghdad to inspect the CPA accounting system, they discovered, to their shock, a single contracted consultant, a Bush-supporter with no experience in accounting, attempting to keep track of all Iraq's finances with a series of spreadsheets. The consultant knew nothing of the standard "double entry" accounting system that produces a bottom line by balancing credits against debits. Instead, noted the IAMB auditors, this man used a "single entry, cash-based, transaction list." This meant there was no way to track how much was being spent or what it was being spent on or whether there were any returns. Although cash spent from the initial $12 billion was supposed to be accounted for monthly and money spent on personal items was to be paid back, the IAMB discovered that nearly a year had passed before any cash reconciliation had taken place—far too late to represent an accurate record or to prevent rampant thievery.

The CPA's main contractor was Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). Prior to taking the job as vice president in the Bush administration, Dick Cheney had been chairman of Halliburton and yet no conflict-of-interest issues were raised. These contracts were "no-bid," i.e. were simply given to Halliburton who could then charge whatever they wished for their services. In this manner, cost overruns became a rampant problem in virtually all reconstruction projects. In at least one case, Halliburton served contaminated water to troops prompting a Halliburton employee to resign in protest.

One of the many projects Halliburton was given was the rebuilding of the oilfields and refineries. The IAMB auditors discovered that while well-heads and pipelines were rebuilt, the oil meters were not. Without the meters, there was simply no way to know how much oil was being produced, how much was being sold, and how much might be getting smuggled or sold on the black market. The IAMB would continue to complain to Bremer about the urgent need to repair the meters and Bremer would reassure them that progress was being made. By the time Bremer left Iraq, however, not a single meter had yet been fixed. The CPA now admits that oil-smuggling has taken place as a result of this negligence. This was a violation of Resolution 1483 and is the responsibility of L. Paul Bremer who has never been charged and who has never offered an explanation for why he never fixed the oil meters nor why he lied about it.

When Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, investigated the CPA's accounting and fiscal management, he released his findings in a report in January 2005. Bowen found that many contract employees receiving payments were non-existent. The problem was so bad that Bowen could only account for 602 actual employees on a register that listed 8,206. He found that the CPA had allowed Iraqi officials not to declare receiving $2.5 billion in oil-for-food payments. Bowen concluded that about $9 billion of U.S. taxpayer money in Iraq has more or less evaporated.

Bremer disputed Bowen's report saying that Bowen and his auditors refused to take into account the extraordinary conditions under which the CPA was forced to operate—even though the worst of it was caused by the CPA itself. Bremer went on to charge that Bowen's people never tried to interview CPA officials to get their side of the story. Auditors' notes, however, state consistently that CPA officials rarely if ever made themselves available, including Bremer himself. George Wolfe, who functioned as treasurer for the CPA, was noted to be downright uncooperative.

Some of the contractor fraud was repeated on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina struck in September 2005: normally a company would seek to farm out reconstruction contracts to various companies who put in bids and offer various services but instead the projects were given to "contractors" who had no equipment or connection to the construction field. They would, in turn, farm out the work to true construction contractors or to another contractor who then farm out the work to other companies. The more needless middlemen that inserted themselves and skimming money off the top, the less money was actually paying for work to be done and so, consequently, the work simply didn't get done.

Other investigations by government offices have revealed contractors being paid sometimes four times for the same job with each payment being exorbitant. When one such plumbing job was investigated, inspectors found that the plumbing hadn't even been replaced although that was what the superfluous billings were for. The inspectors could clearly see that the pipes had merely been polished in an attempt to make them look new. In another case, a contractor was paid numerous times for a non-existent repair on an elevator that promptly broke while in operation and plummeted down the shaft, killing an Iraqi worker.

Upon his return to the U.S., Bremer went on speaking engagements and was frequently questioned about the missing billions. He replied, "I suggest you not worry, as that $9 billion was Iraqi money, not US money." How the thought of American contractors stealing billions from the Iraqis after the U.S. invaded their country on false charges could somehow be more palatable than if the money had been taken from American taxpayers is not explained by Bremer. His answer is, of course, not his own but the administration's.

The Bush administration is expert at skillful lying and deception such as when Bush is pressured to sign into law bills he doesn't favor such as a "no-torture" bill, he then issues a "signing statement" that essentially says, "Since we are in a time of war and I am president, I therefore reserve wartime powers for myself where I may do as I see fit in order to protect the people and therefore I don't have to follow this law I have signed if I don't want to and no one can do anything about it."

Signing statements are only a small part of the Bush administration arsenal for evading the law and human rights. In the case of whistle-blowers, the law used to prosecute offenders is the False Claims Act which came out around the time of the Civil War. Attorney Alan Grayson is employing the False Claims Act so that whistle-blowers may sue those companies that defraud and keep some of the money recovered. Grayson has been able to sue contractor Custer Battles LLC where they were ordered to return $10 million to the government for setting up false companies that received payment for non-existent services.

The problem is that cases filed under the False Claims Act are sealed. This means they cannot move forward until the government, under the Bush administration, joins the lawsuit. This is exactly the loophole the administration needs to destroy the corruption investigation. The False Claims Act requires the government to take a position on the case within 60 days. The administration simply neglects to do this and some of these cases are over two years old and there is really nothing that can be done about it. Without the government's participation, the cases simply cannot go forward and because they are sealed they cannot even be discussed. This means the corruption probe is dead in the water.

How can the government skirt the law so openly? The False Claims Act allows the Justice Department to ask for extensions. They can ask for as many as they want and for as long as they want. The False Claims Act operates on the premise that the government has been defrauded and is mad and wants its money back. In this case, however, the government is the very thief. The government itself is doing the stealing and then refusing to prosecute itself.

To further cloud the issue, even though Grayson won the Custer Battles suit, $10 million is a pittance when the firm was known to have stolen over $50 million. Grayson couldn't get that money because it is tied up in a legal wrangle of whether or not the money is American or Iraqi. If the money is Iraq's then the False Claims Act does not apply as it is written only to apply to American money. Grayson has argued that the money came from the U.S. Treasury. Custer Battles lawyers say the money came from the CPA from the sale of Hussein's palaces, his international banking accounts and oil revenues. Both are right. The money came from Iraqi sources but the CPA was funded by American money with contracts printed on American forms and the money fronted from the U.S. Treasury.

The essence of the case lies in whether the CPA is truly American or truly international. And that's where the Bush administration lawyers get their victory. There are no official documents that tell us exactly who formed the CPA—Bush or the U.N. There are no official documents explaining exactly what the CPA is. Some documents call it a government agency while others are emphatic that it is not. Before the CPA, Iraq was run in the early days of the post-invasion period by the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) under Jay Garner. By May, Bush sent Bremer to Iraq to take over and the CPA was announced with U.N. Security Council approval. What was not announced was whether the CPA actually replaced ORHA and to this day it has never been resolved. Until it is, there is no legal way to determine whether the CPA is a part of the American government or an independent entity. This virtually guarantees that most of the fraud committed by the CPA will never be tried in American courts. Grayson's victory offers some hope but so far only promises to recover a tiny portion of the stolen money with the guilty parties keeping far more than they lose.

Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Brain Baird are working on a new bill that would update the False Claims Act by removing the loopholes that allow the Bush administration to stonewall the trials. The bill would remove the indefinite extensions the current law allows and replaces it with one six-month extension after which a decision must be made. To not join the suits would damage the government's image as soft on corruption. To join them, would force the government to prosecute the thieves it has appointed to oversee reconstruction in Iraq and therefore jeopardize its own credibility. So they sit back and remain silent and there is nothing that can be done about it.

The Lofgren-Baird bill stands little to no chance of passing in a Congress more than willing to assist the administration in the fleecing of the American people and those in Iraq. "We are not engaged in the Iraq war so that corporations could be free to rip off Iraqi money and property that the U.S. helps administer," says Lofgren, but she's wrong. That is exactly why the U.S. is there and the administration and Congress will never allow the big players—Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld—in the scam to called to account. A case will be won here and there but ultimately they are going to get away with it and most Americans don't care.

When you run an enterprise and discover rampant corruption under your administration, you have some choices: if you are honest and decent, you are shocked and angered enough to bring the crooks working under you to justice and overhaul your hiring and screening practices; if you are a crook, you simply ignore it. George Bush has chosen to ignore the fraud his administration has fostered and he is therefore a crook. He cannot hide behind by acting like a stupid but well-meaning buffoon taken advantage of by the crooks and rogues that infiltrated his party (although he's still responsible even if that is the case). His continued indifference of the law-breaking and thievery can no longer be explained as anything other than criminal negligence.

But the biggest problem in the prosecution of these offenders is the American people themselves. Frankly, they don't care about the fraud. These crooks can steal them blind just so long as we win in Iraq. With the drop in oil, I have already heard more times than I can count, "Looks like Bush's war is starting to pay off." You can argue that all you want but it won't make any difference. That is how they see it and that is how they are going to vote.

Some labor under the delusion that with the democrats in office, this corruption probe will go forward. Chances are, it will not speed up appreciably. People also think that with the GOP losing control of Congress, Bush will be impeached. This may be true but the sad truth is, most Americans don't want to see Bush impeached. The democrats can't even talk about it at this point or they will turn voters off. One would think that voters would be screaming for blood. They are not. They're mad at George Bush for not handling this war with authority but they ultimately believe he has it in him to do so because god knows them liberals sure don't. Better to let Bush handle it—if the goddamn democrats would just get off his back and let him do what has to be done.

Get ready for another "unprecedented" victory for the GOP in November. And don't count on a democrat winning office in '08. The democratic frontrunner is Hilary Clinton and nobody in their right mind is going to vote for her and that includes me. She is a traitor and I have no faith in her to do anything any better than George Bush. The time for a democratic victory is now, this November, so that impeachment hearings can be held but it is not going to happen. Don't get mad at crooked George. Get mad at your fellow Americans. They are the ones to blame. They're the ones who find the lies and thefts palatable to voting with a conscience.