Monetary Castualties

Yet another disturbing report regarding the progress of our involvement in Iraq has been made public.
   This report, released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., special inspector general for our reconstruction efforts in Iraq, has nothing to do with our armed forces' continuing combat casualties.
   The focus, instead, is on monetary casualties.
   Reporting on the findings by the inspector general's investigators, The Associated Press said that according to the report, millions upon millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars have gone to fund lucrative reconstruction contracts for projects that have never been finished because of "excessive delay, poor performance or other factors."
   According to the AP, numerous failed projects are being "falsely described by the U.S. government as complete" even though many are, in fact, not complete or were significantly down-scaled from what they were supposed to have been. That, however, did not prevent the government from paying out the full cost of many of those projects to the contractors who were supposed to have completed them.
   As we see it, the report basically shows that the American taxpayer is being bamboozled by at least some reconstruction contractors and our government, for whatever reason, is doing nothing to prevent it.
   What sort of stewardship is that? How are U.S. citizens being served by this sort of wasteful spending?
   At a time when everyone but the Bush administration seems to be able to comprehend the idea that the nation's economy is in a steadily deepening recession, do we really need to continue throwing good money after bad into the morass that our involvement in Iraq has become?
   Couldn't most or all of this money be sent at home repairing our own infrastructures, which are crumbling from years of neglect as more and more federal funding is cut for projects like the improvement and expansion of our Interstate highway system? Couldn't some of the money being wasted in Iraq by greedy contractors who are not fulfilling their obligations be spent on developing more energy efficient means of mass transportation such as a nationwide high-speed rail system that could serve as an alternative to our increasingly financially troubled airlines?
   In the Valley and across the nation, U.S. citizens are being shortchanged every day as our government continues to throw money away in Iraq, and to what end? In the final analysis, what difference will the sacrifices of our military personnel serving in Iraq, the increasing hardships being experienced by Americans at home and all of the money we are pumping into reconstruction really make?
   In the meantime, it was recently revealed that even though Iraq's oil production is coming back on line to the tune of millions of dollars worth a month, virtually none of that is being used by Iraq's government to defray the reconstruction costs being funded by American taxpayers.
   The time is past due to say enough is enough.