How U.S. War Funds Get Wasted … And How to Stop It
How U.S. War Funds Get Wasted … And How to Stop It by Michael Shank, U.S. News & World Report.
… But the sad fact is that IRS-type waste and abuse of funds is all too common. Take, for example, the Defense Department. While the IRS may be pilfering funds in California conference rooms, inspectors general found Pentagon employees engaged in corruption, fraud, kickback schemes and bribery in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thankfully, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, or SIGIR, and the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, recovered hundreds of millions of hard earned American taxpayer dollars.
Yet, as the U.S. engages in more wars, whether in Syria, Mali, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, we have no permanent office for oversight, no permanent special inspector general to provide critical transparency and accountability. These "overseas contingency operations," as they are officially called, may well experience the same kinds of corruption and kickback schemes that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars witnessed. Except this time, there will likely be no inspector general to investigate, prosecute and bring the perpetrators to justice. That is, unless we do something about it…