U.S. Wasted at Least $31 Billion in War Contracts

Wired reports:

It turns out that scattering cash into the wind would have been more efficient than the U.S. system for awarding reconstruction contracts during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A two-year inquiry by a congressionally created panel finds that at least 15 percent of the $206 billion-with-a-B spent on wartime contracts thus far has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse. That very conservative estimate is likely to grow — and it amounts to an indictment not just of wartime contracts, but the wars themselves.

The Commission on Wartime Contracting (.pdf) concludes that “vast amounts” of contract money in Iraq and Afghanistan provided “little or no benefit” to the war efforts. The commission confirmed $31 billion in contractor cash lost to corruption or dysfunction. But it warned that the true figure could be as high as $60 billion, or “$12 million every day for the past 10 years.”

All monopolies are bad and inefficient. Are you ready for ObamaCare?