Yuletide cheer, Interior and Pentagon contractors! More missing billions. And, funny thing, the excuse is the same as the previous kleptocray story today:

The Defense Department paid two procurement operations at the Department of the Interior to arrange for Pentagon purchases totaling $1.7 billion that resulted in excessive fees and tens of millions of dollars in waste, documents show.

Only millions? Pikers!

Defense turned to Interior, which manages federal lands and resources, in an effort to speed up its contracting. Interior is one of several government agencies allowed to manage contracts for other agencies in exchange for a fee.

But the arrangement between Interior and Defense "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests," according to draft audit documents obtained by The Washington Post.

More than half of the contracts examined were awarded without competition or without checks to determine that the prices were reasonable, according to the audits by the inspectors general for Defense (DOD) and Interior (DOI). Ninety-two percent of the work reviewed was awarded without verifying that the contractors' cost estimates were accurate; 96 percent was inadequately monitored.

Hey, and guess what! One of these rip-off contracts was for armor for the troops!

In one instance, Interior officials bought armor to reinforce Army vehicles from a software maker.

Who said there was no upside to the Iraq war!

How come all these stories are breaking on Christmas? To bury them? Or as a bitter commentary over who really gets the presents, and who really gets the lumps of coal?