By Kevin Stoda, Kuwait

“What happened to the $23 Billion Dollars?” is a catch phrase used on the link to the  BBC-News Panarama.  The program is  on BBC TV, radio, and on the web. It  reveals recent  findings that lost billions in Iraq (i.e. starting with the time the U.S. government and military started giving out no-bid contracts for that occupation) are mind boggling to Europeans.

One short trailer for the program can be viewed here.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7438372.stm

The Panarama program is entitled: “BBC UNCOVERS LOST IRAQ BILLIONS”.

BBC Panorama's Jane Corbin has spoken with many who “tell of who got rich and who got burned.” 

In addition, Corbin intensively looks at the “allegations of mismanagement, fraud and waste; tales of contractors chosen for their US government connections without a competitive bidding process; contractors inflating their costs and double counting to increase their profits and billions supposed to be used to rebuild the Iraqi military allegedly ending up in the pockets of some Iraqi government officials.”

Whereas this is old news to people in the USA, this is the first major expose from the U.S.’s most important ally in Iraq—the British. 

See CorpWatch’s Report from Kuwait here on more U.S. billions and how they disappear: http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=11664

On the aforementioned recent BBC program, Henry Waxman, who is the Chairmen of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform notes, “It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.”

Judge Radhi al-Radhi of Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity has looked into the matter from the Iraqi side.  He has noted that billions of dollars disappeared from the country’s various national budgets, including the Defense Budget, over the past 4 to 5 years. 

Al-Radhi stated on BBC, “I believe these people are criminals. …They failed to rebuild the Ministry of Defense, and as a result the violence and the bloodshed went on and on - the murder of Iraqis and foreigners continues and they bear responsibility.”

The recent news report from BBC occurred the very same week that reports from London were shared on BBC stating that the UK was considering withdrawing from Basra, Iraq by the end of the year--if improvements in Iraq continue. “Previous plans to reduce troop numbers to 2,500 were put on hold in March”, i.e. before the recent jump in violence there.

If one desires to comment on the likely pullout, you can go to this site and HAVE YOUR SAY on a BBC program of that same name.

http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=4927&edition=2&ttl=20080610214407

In less than a single day of discussion, there had been nearly 800 comments.  Americans and British really need to dialogue about leaving Iraq now, June 2008.

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