From the Dept. of You've Got to be Kidding "U.S. Faults Its Bid to Replace Iraq’s Accounting System"

[ProSense]

U.S. Faults Its Bid to Replace Iraq’s Accounting System

By JAMES GLANZ and ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: October 25, 2007

BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 — An American project to replace the Iraqi government’s opaque and easily manipulated Saddam Hussein-era accounting system has failed to achieve its goals after four years and more than $38 million, an American oversight agency reported Wednesday.

An early objective of the American occupation was to streamline the corrupt Iraqi bureaucracy that had flourished under Mr. Hussein, and establish controls that would make it more difficult to divert the enormous Iraqi oil revenues that provide nearly all of the government’s budget.

But the American oversight agency, called the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said Wednesday in a report that the system the United States had chosen had shown a “lack of understanding of the existing Iraq financial and business processes,” and had not taken root.

As a result, the new system has had little impact on Iraq’s financial apparatus, said Ginger Cruz, a deputy inspector general in the office. The old system remains in place, she said.

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Computer system down for a month in Iraq

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The U.S. spent at least $38 million to give Iraq's government a computerized accounting system — and no one noticed when it was not working for a month, a report said Wednesday.

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US suspends Iraq audit of DynCorp

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 23, 11:52 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The State Department so badly managed a $1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it can't tell what it got for the money spent, a new report says.

Because of disarray in invoices and records on the project — and because the government is trying to recoup money paid inappropriately to contractor DynCorp International, LLC — auditors have temporarily suspended their effort to review the contract's implementation, said Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr.

Bowen had been trying to review a February 2004 contract to DynCorp awarded by the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The company was to provide housing, food, security, facilities, training support, law enforcement staff with various specialties as well as weapons and armor for personnel assigned to the program.

"I guess it's a familiar theme," Bowen said Monday, in that problems have previously been documented with both DynCorp and the agency overseeing the contract.

[Vincardog]

1. jr and his criminal crew do not believe that government should be effective at anything other than

assisting their corporate masters in looting. (.)

[Telly Savalas]

4. Why should they believe otherwise?

Congress has done nothing in the last 10 months to discourage this sort of thing.

[MrModerate]

2. My company worked in Iraq 2003-2006 and has . . .

very high accounting standards (DCAA-compliant, much more strict than required in contracts between non-government entities). We would bust our butts getting invoicing and other documentation hand-carried to the CPA fucktards in the Palace according to our contractual requirements -- and the goniffs wouldn't even review 'em. Our contracting officer didn't know how to read an invoice and had to be guided by our accounting guys as to where he was required to sign and what forms he was required to generate. We coulda' robbed 'em blind.

As part of our corporate culture, we don't operate that way, but it was intensely frustrating to have all that work ignored, and to realize that we were surrounded by less scrupulous contractors who might well have been robbing 'em blind -- but it would never be known.

While I was almost never endangered to the degree that our soldiers are (I spent 90% of my time in the Green Zone), I was nevertheless putting my ass somewhat on the line, and to have to serve total incompetents made my blood boil (well, that and the 130-degree heat).

[Telly Savalas]

3. You gotta admire how the White House and Congress

have taken the personal finance philosophies of a heroin addict and applied them to the federal government.

[Double T]

5. The US government wrote the book: "Accounting for Really Stupid Dummies"..............

now, where did all those missing billions go???

[gateley]

6. My god, does this administration fuck up EVERYTHING? Rhetorical Q. No response necessary. nt

[WilliamPitt]

7. Because they're not fucking up.

They're doing wonderfully...according to their actual priorities.

Ooops! We lost billions.

Where'd it go?

Well, y'know where your lap goes when you stand up? The money went there.

Really.

Promise.

*snicker*

Suckers.