A BBC report has claimed that more than $23 billion in assets and money has been lost, stolen or not properly acounted for. Call me a cynic, but I’m going to say stolen is the far likliest of those possibilities.

There are 70 ongoing investigations of US companies upon which there is a gagging order which stops any public discussion of the investigations.

It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history

Henry Waxman

This is an absolute indictment of the puppet regime put in place by the US and UK. The Iraqi defence minister Hazem Shalaan siphoned off $1.2 bilion from the Iraqi government by buying second hand military equipment and passing it off as brand new. You know where to look when someone says “they should be able to defend themselves by now”. It was never the intention of the invaders to create a strong Iraqi government that would be capable of policing its own borders, how else would the US justify a prolonged presence in the country, given that there is no immediate threat from its neighbours.

The article on the BBC website says that the gagging order is unlikely to be rescinded before George Bush’s reign as president. We must then ask, where is the opposition backbone, what resources does the constitution allow the citizens of the U.S. to seek jusice for such crimes and mismanagement? The only redrss afforded to the people is to elect candidates from other parties that may have managed the war differently, but would nonetheless, have waged it anyway. Parliamentary, representive democracy does not allow citizens of a state the opportunity to exercise any democratic involvement in their governance. Waiting until an election will not help the people of Iraq in either the short or long term.

When we see articles like this about the corruption that we are not even allowed discuss, we must not only critique the administration that carry out these policies, but the system that allows them to do so.

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