Would you believe the US Gov't has wasted $4B in Iraq?

BAGHDAD - In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.

"It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad.

The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.

"This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure."

In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.

Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" 鈥?or more than $4 billion 鈥?from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.

But the empty prison compound 鈥?in the shadows of more than two dozen watchtowers now dotted by birds' nests 鈥?is an open sore for both American watchdogs and local Iraqi politicians who had counted on the prison as an economic boost.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_o...

When I read that story earlier I wanted to punch something.

Let's keep raising taxes, foreclosing on homes, and jacking up the cost of gas.

Brilliant strategy.

$400 billion in Iraq is a drop in the bucket compared to the 2 or 3 trillion dollars spent every year

No. I saw a site, i forgot where but i'll try to find it. They spent 400 billion, and the US is in debt 10 trillion dollars.

---EDIT---- HERE IT IS
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costof...

billion? theyve wasted a hell of a lot more than that... im probably combining what the gov spent in the entire war but it was in the trillions... thats why our economy is so screwd up

You say wasted I say necessary.

Honestly, it's more sad than anything else..

Tell you what, it'd make an awfully fine Meth lab. Rent it out!

Sadly, I do believe it. When is it all going to end?

I bet its more than even that

I am sure our rewards will be ten fold there...