It's not anti-Bush sniping to ask where $15 b. of Iraq reconstruction money went.  There is quite a double standard in Washington when it comes to Pentagon spending.  I have a formerly homeless friend, who suffers from seizures and can't work.  When he moved to a better apartment almost two years ago, his Food Stamps were cut off for a month, and he had to reapply.  Two social workers checked him out before he was were reinstated.  This is standard procedure for the Food Stamp program.  However, if you dole out money and equipment for Uncle Sam in Baghdad's Green Zone, no one is checking out where it goes, even if it's munitions that may ultimately end up killing young Americans there.

Several of my friends have served in Baghdad trying to perform Treasury functions.  They all came back discouraged by what they saw and over how Bush Administration policies prevented them from restoring order and operating effectively. 

This interview with my former Senate Budget Committee colleague, David Nummy, says it all.  He went over within days of our taking of Baghdad on April 23, 2003 to be the "acting Minister of Finance" under the U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) for 90 days until that function could be turned over to the Iraqi's.  I kidded him before he left that the only effective Treasury function that could be served was to stop those truckloads of $100 bills that Saddam Hussein was sending to Damascus or other safe hiding spots.  Little did I know that my kidding was only the beginning of how bad it was.  David arrived to find the Iraqi Ministry of Finance has been looted, and all records had been burned, despite David's advance warnings to military leaders that protecting these institutions should be a high priority.  Then he made contact with former officials who had records on old computer floppy disks.  He enlisted them in reestablishing some Treasury function, only to have all of that effort undermined by President Bush's order against allowing any Baathists or former Iraqi military to participate in the new government.  David stayed on a little longer, but saw that the 100 Americans in his group had no chance to carry out their mission to reestablish Treasury function for 22 million Iraqi's.  Please read to the end of this interview, where David describes his sense of personal security in Baghdad before our policies lost control of the situation.

What followed?  We funded "our Iraqi friends" and a lot of U.S. contractors, who happily spent every dollar we sent them.  Did they keep records?  Some did, and some didn't.  Slowly, the sorry story is beginning to leak out.  The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has the most comprehensive record of our "reconstruction of Iraq."

For those of us who lived through Vietnam, this is very reminiscent of our support for the corrupt Diem government and those that followed until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.  Even Vietnamese who initially supported us went over to the North because we backed corrupt local politicians and because we couldn't provide security.

Wars are inherently wasteful.  That doesn't mean the aftermath has to be.  Unfortunately, by exporting Washington's blind eye for defense spending, we undermine our entire purpose for the war in the first place and the sacrifices of our brave young men and women, in and out of uniform, whom we remember this Memorial Day.