Seriously, I don’t think I could even spend that much in a year. And you should see me in a shoe store. Team BIO reports, and I hope the Democrats in Congress are listening:

As President Bush prepares to ask Congress to throw another $1.2 billion dollars into the gaping maw that is the Iraq Reconstruction Fund, a recent report from the independent Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction shows that at least $3 Billion has been wasted in such efforts since US demolition reconstruction efforts began in 2003.

Highlighted in the report are the following:

There’s the $43.8 million spent on a temporary police training camp that has never even been used.

There’s the $36.4 million for armored vehicles, body armor, and weapons that no one seems able to account for.

There’s the $73 million facility built to train Iraqi security forces that has massive expansion cracks in the walls and trickling sewage from ceilings.  Read more 

Of course, I beat TPM on this days ago, but this is an unimportant little read blog, so let me quote the professionals now catching up:

Today, President Bush finally signed the Coburn-Obama database bill into law. A handful of large blogs from across the political spectrum, aided by hundreds of readers, banded together to push for the bill’s passage, which will create a searchable website of federal grants, loans and contracts.

But when the bill arrived on the President’s desk, he saw fit to invite bloggers who are reliably conservative.

Somehow our invitation got lost in the mail. I think that means only one side of that inspriring blog union got to meet the President. Unless Wonkette… no.

It was an oversight, no doubt.

Gosh! They didn’t call me either. And I’ve dissed Obama! Sob. Anyhoo- don’t ever let anyone tell you winger blogs are anything but utter tools. I’m sure Glenn’s latest “project” will take off and last for generations beyond counting.  Read more 

[I just consolidated Xan’s post and mine. There are two explanations for any state of human affairs: Fuck up, and conspiracy. Xan says Fuck up, I say conspiracy.]

Xan: It’s a Fuckup
Displaying the immense grasp of the intricacies of geopolitics for which He has been recognized worldwide, the near-omnipotent subtlety of thought, Dear Leader solves the Middle East’s current crisis. My God, why were we not blessed with his wisdom long ago?

”See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s—- and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.  Read more 

I’m not really qualified to speak about weapons and military technology, but I can smell waste when it’s a big pile of steaming shit right out there in front of me like anyone else. Thank goddess for people like the find DT crew, who do the dirty work so I don’t have to. I’m fairly sure there isn’t enough blogspace out there to cover all the examples of this:

One Pentagon agency that’s been particularly aggro in its dealing with the press has been the Joint IED Defeat Organization. The groups, which started in 2003 as a “12-person office to develop quick strategies for combating homemade bombs in Iraq — has quietly expanded into a $3 billion-per-year arm of the Pentagon, with more than 300 employees and thousands of contract workers,” the Boston Globe notes. And like most fast-growing start-ups, the JIEDDO is having trouble figuring out what its focus should be.  Read more