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. 

Discussions about the federal budget like the ones we often engage in here at CG&G, typically focus on "formulation," that is, on the process and politics of putting the budget together and getting it enacted.  That's the part we all generally agree is broken, not working properly, overly politicized, and...well...you get the picture.

But this story from Friday's Washington Post, which talks about $15 billion in spending on Iraq that can't be accounted for properly, or in some cases at all, shows that the other stage of federal budgeting -- implementation -- is similarly broken, not working properly, and...well...you certainly get this picture as well.

In fact, it appears as if virtually every procedure and law designed to prevent just this type of malfeasance was circumvented.

This spending was done in the midst of a national emergency and some of the usual safeguards couldn't be followed in the interest of national security and getting the job done quickly, right?

The evidence continues to mount: Blackwater, that is, the reliance on contractors to do what should be done by the military, is the direct result of the Pentagon’s, or White House’s disastrous federal budget policies.