Short Stories, Long Odds

In a breaking story released predictably at an ungodly hour on a Sunday, the CPA was audited and the resulting report shows that around $9,000,000,000.00 is missing, misappropriated, or impossible to account for.

The official who led the authority, L. Paul Bremer III, submitted a blistering written reply to the findings, saying the report had “many misconceptions and inaccuracies” and lacked professional judgment.

Bremer said the report “assumes that Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war.”

So says L. Paul from now until the end of all things.  Being in the midst of a war does not, however, explain all of the report’s findings, like those which follow the jump:

Authority staff learned that 8,206 guards were on the payroll at one ministry, but only 602 could be accounted for, the report said. At another ministry, US officials indicated there were 1,417 guards on the payroll but could confirm only 642. When staff members of the US occupation government recommended that payrolls be verified before salary payments, authority financial officials “stated the [authority] would rather overpay salaries than risk not paying employees and inciting violence,” the inspector general said.

It is possible that I’m being a little hard on L. Paul, and there are some difficulties involved in managing a country you just invaded.  Among L. Paul’s other rebuttals were these reasonable factoids:

With more than a million Iraqi families depending on government salaries, there would have been an increased security threat if civil servants had not been paid until modern pay records were developed.

US policy was to build up the Iraqi force guarding government facilities, and it was better to accept an imperfect payroll system than “to stop paying armed, young men” providing security.

The report was suggesting the authority “should have placed hundreds of [authority] auditors” in Iraqi ministries, contrary to US and UN policy of giving Iraqi ministers responsibility for budgets.
 - all quotes from Boston Globe

My initial argument with this is that there is a marked difference between not being able to account for money and not being able to account for employees. It is also an odd argument to say that you don’t want to stop paying the guys with guns when you just fired 400,000 guys with guns. But I’m a professional, so L. Paul gets his say.

So you don’t want to stop paying the guys with the guns, and if you have to have an imperfect payroll system to keep everyone happy, then I suppose you can excuse a small discrepency here or there. That being said, there’s a whole lot of money that can’t be accounted for, and the fact that the CPA’s officials are doing their best to blame it on Iraqis is disappointing.  Hell, it’s disappointing that this even happened.

I also should note, as I play the role of Transparency International Devil’s Advocate, that despite the wartime position Iraq found itself in, the disregard of accountability for money and expenditure - and keep in mind, this is the Iraqi people’s money, so if they weren’t dodging mortars I would hope they’d be upset -  is a poor precedent to set for an emerging free nation.  It doesn’t instill a sense of financial responsibility in… well, in anybody, really.

Seeing as how so much of American credibility rightly rests on the handling of the Iraq war and the resultant foreign policy, we have some important questions to ask.  Primary among those is, “Why did it take so long for this come out?” and immediately on the heels of that, “Who are we going to hold accountable for the $9,000,000,000.00 of Iraqi money that has seemingly vanished?”  

I’m not saying someone should swing for this, and its fair to say that this will disappear pretty soon and chalked up as economic collateral freedom costs or something, but $9,000,000,000.00 buys a lot of food or medicine or could keep the power and water on in Iraq for at least what, a few weeks?