In one case, a US soldier gambled away more than $40,000 while accompanying the Iraqi Olympic boxing team to the Philippines. In others, "one contracting officer kept approximately $2 million in cash in a safe in his office bathroom", the report says, "while a paying agent kept approximately $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker".
The lack of supervision had tragic consequences. A contract for $662,800 to refurbish the Hilla General Hospital was paid in full by a US official, even though the work was not finished. Instead of replacing a central lift, as demanded in the contract, workers only tinkered with the existing mechanism. Three months later the lift crashed, killing three Iraqis.
This is the dumbest thing I've heard about all damned day. Millions and millions and millions of dollars were being handed out and noone, not one single person, thought to keep track of it. How stupid do you have to be? All those people that must have handled the red tape and all the details that were dealt with and noone was appointed to write it down? It never occurred to anyone who handled the money that, hey, gee, we might need to know where this goes? A little money gone by the wayside I can accept but 9 billion?! Are you fucking kidding me? 9 BILLION, gone, pfft, just like that, never to be seen again. I don't know which is more disturbing, the lack of accounting or the abject greed that this debacle spotlights. I wonder where all that money went? Could it be that the money was deliberately mishandled so as to make it easier for our Holy American Emperor George to line his handlers' pockets? Let the little people take what they can grab and don't keep track of any of it, that way noone will know that we laughed all the way to the bank, eh? Ya think?