The Iraqi Defense Ministry has squandered more than $300 million buying faulty and outdated military equipment in what appears to be a massive web of corruption that flourished under American-appointed supervisors for a year or longer, U.S. and Iraqi military officials said this week.
Vendors are suspected of vastly overcharging for substandard equipment, including helicopters, machine guns and armored vehicles, and kicking back money to Iraqi Defense Ministry buyers.
The defective equipment has jeopardized the lives of Iraq’s embattled security forces and exposed a startling lack of oversight for one of the country’s most crucial rebuilding projects.
Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus is the senior U.S. officer in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces. He declined to comment on the allegations, saying it was a matter for the sovereign government of Iraq to resolve.
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Americans still ran the show behind the scenes, said several Iraqi bureaucrats involved with the ministry at the time. It’s implausible to them that U.S. officials, who held daily briefings with Iraqi defense chiefs, didn’t catch wind of the alleged wrongdoing.**
In one case, a team of Iraqi defense inspectors traveled to Poland to check on what they understood to be a fleet of refurbished transport helicopters that cost the government more than $100 million. What the inspectors found were 24 Soviet-era helicopters, each about 30 years old and way past its prime. Disgusted, the Iraqi team refused the aircraft and returned to Baghdad empty-handed, with neither helicopters nor the money paid up front for them.
disastrous purchases include a shipment of sleek MP5 machine guns, costing about $3,500 apiece, that are now believed to be Egyptian-made knockoffs worth $200 each on the street, according to American and Iraqi officials familiar with the contracts under scrutiny.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/krwashbureau/20050714/ts_krwashbureau/_bc_usiraq_arms_exclusive_wa
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Oh well more courruption from the US occupier terrorists and their hand picked Puppet government did we expect anything else from these band of thieves!**