Today I stumbled on this article in Rolling Stone.   I urge you all to read it.  In fact, you have a duty to read it.  And then do something about it.  Contact your Senators and Representatives. 
 
 A few lowlights:


1) A company that was awarded a contract to construct the Baghdad Police College.
$72 million later, and what was the result?
……. one of the great engineering clusterf***s of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in s*** and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.
 
2) Jim O’Beirne, a Bush crony who:
judged applicants not on their Arabic skills or their relevant expertise but on their Republican bona fides; he sent a twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance to manage the reopening of the Iraqi stock exchange, and appointed a recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled kids who had no accounting experience to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget.
 
3) Custer/Battles.  This pair of crooks and liars should be shot for treason.  Among their misdeeds are these gems:  They painted old forklifts they found at the Baghdad airport, and then billed the U.S. as if they were new.  C/B was given a contract to provide security at the airport for civilian flights.  But since there weren’t any flights, the CPA (under traitor Paul Bremer) gave them wads of money for x-ray screening equipment and canine patrols.  They didn’t buy a thing, save perhaps one dog that seemed to be more a pet than working dog. 
 
The good ole boys, Custer and Battles, were finally busted when they accidentally left a spreadsheet behind showing their fraudulent ways. 
 
So what did the Bush administration do?
The Bush administration not only refused to prosecute the pair -- it actually tried to stop a lawsuit filed against the contractors by whistle-blowers hoping to recover the stolen money. The administration argued that Custer Battles could not be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. government because the CPA was not part of the U.S. government. The jury disagreed, finding Custer Battles guilty of ripping off taxpayers. But the verdict was set aside by T.S. Ellis III, a federal judge who cited the administration's "the CPA is not us" argument.
 
4) Then we have the “Dummy Vendor” scam, perpetrated on the US taxpayer by the Army Corp of Engineers.  They had some money left over, with nothing to spend it on, so they created out of thin air 96 different contracts, worth $362 million and gave the contracts to "Dummy Vendors."  “In their report on the mess, auditors noted that money to nobody "does not constitute proper obligations." 
 
5) This one is a beaut….The “job is over when the money runs out”scam.  Example:  Bechtel was awarded $50 million to build a Childrens’ Hospital in Basra.  (Never mind that Basra had no clean water).  Costs soared to $169 million, Bechtel was “pulled off” the project without a SINGLE BED ready for use.  Explained USAID spokesman David Snider, Bechtel was "under a 'term contract,' which means their job is over when their money ends."
 
Please take the time to read the article at the above link.