We saw yesterday’s quarterly audit report on Iraq fraud, published by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Stuart Bowen Jr. The message is sobering:

“The security situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, hindering progress in all reconstruction sectors and threatening the overall reconstruction effort,” in the words of the Inspector General.

We all have already seen reports of how the United States is being exploited by dishonest and incompetent contractors in Iraq. This IG Report discusses not only poor security, but also
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We all remember how Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita left the Gulf Coast devastated. As government agencies began to provide disaster relief with public dollars, dishonest contractors saw a huge opportunity for fraud against the government. Too many FEMA contracts have been the targets of dishonest contractors.

The “watchdogs” of the federal government agencies–the various Inspectors General of the many agencies involved in Katrina relief–have combined their efforts and sent hundreds of auditors to the Gulf region to examine fraud and mismanagement of Katrina