Frustrating Evidence of the Week

During recent testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the former U.S. Administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, discussed the billions of dollars irresponsibly spent by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bremer served as the head of the CPA during the organization's "rule" of Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004.

Please keep in mind the various accomplishments of Bremer in his tenure as the U.S. Administrator of Iraq, including completely disbanding the Iraqi military (more than 300,000 individuals) and removing approximately 50,000 Baath Party members from government ministries, schools and universities. Aside from those excellent decisions, audits by both the United Nations and Stuart Bowen, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, concluded that Bremer and CPA could not account for the $12 billion allocated. One primary reason is that the CPA never released spending guidelines. In fact, Bowen reported that virtually no evidence was available to verify the funds were spent on legitimate projects. At the same time, when any evidence was actually provided, the information clearly showed a complete mismanagement of the appropriated money due to waste and corruption, including funds for a Baghdad police academy with severe construction defects and a $48 million police training camp (which was never used but still contained an Olympic size swimming pool).