WHERE HAS ALL THE MONEY GONE

There always seems to be a big war-spending bill before Congress. Where does this money go?

If there was no war and the troops were here at home, we would still be paying them their monthly pay and we would be feeding them with more costly meals than the RTEs they get on the battlefield. I know that a lot of Coast Guard and reservists were called into duty, but it doesn’t seem like that many to me.

The latest war-spending bill before Congress asks for $92.5 billion dollars. Now I know that the money doesn’t go to individual soldiers and that there is a lot of built-in pork, but that amounts to $578,125 for each of the 160,000 soldiers in Iraq.

We know the government isn’t spending much for military equipment. The troops are poorly equipped and the lack of “IED-proof” vehicles is quite apparent. They were not given the latest in personal gear either.

If the troops aren’t benefiting from the money, who is?

So far we have spent over $419,000,000,000 in Iraq. That’s over 419 Billion extra dollars and I would like to know where it is being spent. Who is reaping the benefits of these war-dollars. We know it is not the troops. We know it is not the Iraqis; most projects remain unfinished and we have not yet got them back to where they were before our invasion. It is not being spent on rebuilding roads or schools or airports. So where is it going?

I imagine that a big hunk of it is going to build what could be called “The Bush Legacy” or as the Iraqis call it: “George W’s palace”. The structure will bigger than anything Saddam Hussein built (It covers an area of 104 acres with 15-foot thick perimeter walls) and will be visible from space. It will be larger than the Vatican city and big enough to accommodate four Millennium Domes.

Under construction since mid-2005 with a target completion date of June 2007, is the new U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The construction is being led by the Kuwaiti firm First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting, a subcontractor of Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root. Wouldn’t you know they would be involved?

When finished, it will resemble a mini-state, entirely independent from the outside world. It will generate its own power, pump its own sewage and draw its own water. It will be ten times the size of the average US embassy and six times the size of the UN compound in New York.

There will be impressive residences for the Ambassador and his deputy, six apartments for senior officials, and two huge office blocks for 8,000 staff to work in. There will be what is rumored to be the biggest swimming pool in Iraq, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, a cinema, restaurants offering delicacies from favorite US food chains, tennis courts and an American Club for evening functions.

Unlike the many failed reconstruction projects elsewhere in Iraq, the embassy complex is said to be well-built and on target for completion as scheduled.

The question that puzzles and enrages the residents of Baghdad is how is it that the Americans can’t keep the electricity running in Baghdad for more than a couple of hours a day and yet still manage to build themselves the biggest embassy on Earth?

Despite “significant progress” in recent months, less than half the water and electricity projects have been completed. A U.S. Inspector General’s report into reconstruction found that although $22 billion had been spent on water, sewage and electricity, the infrastructure is still operating at prewar levels.

Congress was originally told that the bill for the embassy would be $592 million, but The Congressional Research Service complained that because of opaque budgets that prevent effective Congressional oversight, the real cost of the construction program could not be accurately known. Now the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has been estimated to cost over $1.5 billion and we all know how accurate those estimates are. A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon it runs into real money.

As of 2006, the embassy employed over 1,000 people, only six of whom can speak Arabic fluently and more than 2,000 security and defense staff will be living and working in the area, including a large number of private contractors serving as bodyguards and a robust force of marines for the special perimeter defense system.

Though the site is an open secret, U.S. Embassy officials, currently based in Hussein’s former Republican Palace, are forbidden to discuss it.

There were no Iraqis employed in the building of this tribute to George W. Bush, they were all Asians.

The California Curmudgeon