Feb
2
The President’s budget requests $192 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year and a half, including $160 billion for the next year. While $13.3 billion per month is a staggering figure in itself, it does not include:
- Funding for veterans medical care, veterans disability compensation, and job training, housing and reintegration programs for veterans
- Other costs buried in the defense budget, such as medical costs of military hospitals, senior Pentagon management time and attention, concurrent receipt of benefits, base salaries and equipment depreciation
- Interest on the debt used to finance the war
- Economic costs, such as loss of life, quality of life impairment, impact on family members, dislocation and long-term mental health disabilities
Jan
27
SIGIR audit cites waste in $2.5 billion DynCorps contract
Filed Under Latest News & Scandals | Leave a Comment
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) this week issued an audit of a $2.5 billion State Department contract with DynCorp International for training Iraq’ police. The report finds that the State department failed to oversee the contract properly, due to a shortage of staff to oversee work done by contractors. The SIGIR discovered that there was ONE single conractor officer to monitor invoices for the $2.5 billion contract –who was approving all invoices without questioning them. (There are now 3 contracting officers overseeing the contract).
The result: waste. For example, the Department paid more than $4 million per year to assign a 16-person security detail to protect 6 US contractors in Iraq who already had a whole team of hired guards.
Read report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-008.pdf
Jan
26
SIGIR finds money for democracy-building in Iraq is misspent
Filed Under Casualty Reports & FOIA, Latest News & Scandals | Leave a Comment
Only 41 percent of the $114 million in the 7 DRL grants reviewed by SIGIR (there were 12 total) actually went to the programs. IRI’s money went heavily to security (57.2%) with about 7% on overhead; while NDI spent about one-third on security (32.7%) but more on indirect overhead costs (17%).
Read the report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-012.pdf
Jan
14
26% increase in suicide rate among male Iraq/Afghan veterans
Filed Under Latest News & Scandals, Veterans | Leave a Comment
Another cost of the war continues in the form of rising suicide rates among veterans. Despite massive intervention by the military and the VA, including a number of new programs and studies to prevent suicide among returning vets, the rate between 2005 -2007 has risen by 26%, to historic proportions, according to recent data released by the VA.
Our research shows that the economic value of a life lost is around $7 million — this, of course, does not count the tragedy of the loss to the individual and his or her family.
Jan
8
Another hidden cost of war — the tragic plight of infants in Fallujah.
Read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects