4 billion unaccounted for?!
 

how the hell can 4 BILLION dollars go missing?
a couple million or a few hundred thousand i can understand,
but billions!? holy shit. this may be accounted for soon but
man! i can't imagine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3206841.stm
A British charity has accused the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq of failing to account for $4bn meant to help rebuild the country.
The charity, Christian Aid, said in a report that the authority had not publicly disclosed its accounts since Saddam Hussein was ousted in April.

The report's authors calculated that the CPA had received at least $5bn in oil revenues and assets seized from Saddam Hussein's government.

However, only $1bn of this could be traced, while the rest had simply vanished into a "financial black hole", said the report.

"For all the talk of freedom and democracy for the Iraqi people before, during and after the war which toppled Saddam Hussein," said the report, "there is no way of knowing how the vast majority of this money has been spent".

Mistrust

The charity's accusations come as a big international conference to raise money for the reconstruction of Iraq is getting under way in the Spanish capital, Madrid.

However, Christian Aid says the lack of information about what happened to the existing money is fuelling suspicion and mistrust among ordinary Iraqis.

One of the report's authors, Dominic Nutt, said it was possible that the money had been spent in a perfectly legitimate way, but the authority had not demonstrated this as it was obliged to do by the terms of its United Nations mandate.

A spokeswoman for the CPA in Baghdad responded by saying that the authority was committed to "the highest standards of transparency and accountability" in its handling of Iraqi funds.

Maybe they bought 4 million dollars worth of grain, meat, bricks and trees for the iraqi people and nobody noticed it. Cause you know, 4 billion dollars worth of supplies could fit in the trunk of my car.

oh yea, that spains it :)

since alot of money is just based on record-keeping, I can see it go missing. I'm more baffled by nuclear war heads going missing.

those are only worth 250 million :rolleyes

x 1000

Maybe they used the money to build Bibles.

I hope every penny of it was spread to greedy, corrupt, people whom were already weathley. Just so the the balence of nature can stay intact.

Civillian head honcho whatsisface, Bremmer or bremner or whomever, says that the money has NOT 'gone missing' and that he will present a transparent accounting shortly that will show where every penny has gone.

I think this was a grave tactical error. In a very best case scenario, With no money missing. Any operation this large and costly will have embrassing overcharges and corruption.

This is looking for trouble, and they are bound to get it.

By any chance, is WorldCom, or maybe Arthur Andersen, in charge of managing the money?

Hey, Don't forget Halliburton, who's had to settle up out of court for overcharging the govt.