A slight change in the lyrics of my favorite Scottish folk song sets the theme for this column.
My money flies over the ocean
My money flies over the sea
My money flies over the ocean
Oh bring back my money to me.
The size and complexity of our federal government presents the biggest danger our country faces. Forget political personalities and political parties - we are financially going down the tube. Waste of our tax money is rampant!
Let me give you a report of how our taxes are being used in Iraq - the war we have won; not Afghanistan, just Iraq.
The Office of the Special General for Iraq Reconstruction has made a report dated July 27. It is titled, "Development Fund for Iraq: Department of Defense Needs To Improve Financial and Management Controls."
The 23-page report is available on the Internet and goes into quite a bit of detail. The essence of the report is in its opening sentence: "Weaknesses in DoD's (Department of Defense) financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI (Development Fund for Iraq) funds it received for reconstruction activities in Iraq."
This is just for Iraq - 96 percent of Iraq's funds cannot be accounted for! Rebuilding Afghanistan is yet to come!
Early in June, The Associated Press reported an inspector general report on missing property in the U.S. embassy in Iraq: 159 of the embassy's 1,168 vehicles, worth $18.5 million, are unaccounted for; 282 vehicles worth $40.4 million have not been properly registered.
The embassy is paying $270,000 per year in charges for more than 2,000 cell phones that have not been registered. It is estimated the embassy could save more than $740,000 a year by disconnecting unassigned and underused cell phones and limiting international calls.
The embassy has 1,000 hand-held radios it is using and could save $936,000 by sending them to posts where they are needed.
Also, $2.3 million worth of property is stored in warehouses or shipping containers that should be returned or sent to other missions - chairs worth $275,276, televisions worth $451,550, mattresses worth $122,418, tables worth $173,899 and DVD players worth $29,214.
Folks, this is just a speck of the monumental waste of your tax money by corruption, complexity and confusion. The size of our government is killing us faster than the terrorists!
This nation should shift into high gear and retain this victory, even though it means property and civilian casualties, or swallow our pride and shift into reverse and get out of the Middle East - indecision abroad and at home is putting us in an impossible situation.
In the meantime I'll keep singing. "My money flies over the ocean, Oh bring back my money to me. ..."
