Jewish mysticism, contemporary politics, and personal musings, Torture, Treason, Corruption, Lies and Incompetence
Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq ProjectsBy JAMES GLANZPublished: July 30, 2006BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 - The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.In March 2005, A.I.D. asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to "to absorb greatly increased construction costs" at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce "contractor overhead" on the project.The hospital's construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency "was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million," the inspector general wrote in his report.The report said it suspected that other unreported costs on the hospital could drive the tab even higher. In another case cited in the report, a power station project in Musayyib, the direct construction cost cited by the development agency was $6.6 million, while the overhead cost was $27.6 million.One result is that the project's overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.Continues Reading...
