OLBERMANN: And unrest in Iraq may be pegged to many things, but not in the most paranoid dreams of its critics could the insurgency have been blamed in small part on Halliburton. A United Nations board says the U.S. should repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for work performed by Kellogg Brown Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
International Advisory and Monitoring Board saying that the contracting work was overpriced, sometime poorly done, paid for, by the way, with Iraqi oil proceeds. The advisory board‘s findings were based on audits, produced after months of refusal to cooperate from the Pentagon. At issue, the so-called sole source or no-bid contracts that are the coin of the realm in Iraqi reconstruction.
But that $208 million is just a drop in the bucket compared to the $20 billion that has been squandered in Iraq, according to a mind-boggling account by Philip Giraldi of The American Conservative. According to Mr. Giraldi, it is that money trail or the missing money trail that is at the center of nearly everything that‘s wrong in Iraq.
Iraqis caught in the middle of car bombings, spotty public services, no reason to get behind the occupation instead of the insurgency because rampant cronyism and profiteering rule the day. For example, April 2004, three Black Hawk helicopters delivered $1.5 million in cash to a courier in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Destination unknown. All those bags of money just disappeared. Joining us now, Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and now a contributing editor for The American Conservative.
Thank you for your time tonight, sir.
PHILIP GIRALDI, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE: Good evening.
OLBERMANN: Before the big picture here, what might have happened to that $1.5 million, for example, and how would you begin to describe the kind of corruption you‘ve investigated there?
GIRALDI: Well, the corruption in Iraq seems to be pervasive. And it began really when the Coalition Provisional Authority that was headed by Paul Bremer took over the country shortly after the—Saddam Hussein was defeated. Money, as you described, $1.5 million, disappearing in three Black Hawk helicopters, was only one example of the nearly $20 billion of Iraqi money that came from the Oil-for-Food Program and also from frozen Iraqi government assets that were literally disappeared in the course of 15 months.
OLBERMANN: It is not just a question of the money, there‘s also what that money was intended to be used for that it did not get to do: rebuilding; improving Iraq‘s infrastructure; water supplies; electricity. Is any of that happening to an acceptable degree?
GIRALDI: Well, it is very much debatable if any of it is happening. If you think back, after the fall of Saddam Hussein. There was no insurgency. And there was no insurgency for a very long time. The Pentagon basically went into Iraq with no plan for reconstruction. And if this $20 billion had been used to restore water supplies and restore electricity, it would have made a huge difference in terms of the popular support for the insurgency which increased as the infrastructure continued to deteriorate.
OLBERMANN: So apart from that direct—it is be really a direct connection, but that kind of inferential connection, is there anything regarding that money vacuum that also played into the establishment of the insurgency? Is there a way that any of that money could have wound up in the insurgents‘ hands?
GIRALDI: Well, you know, when you have a country that was awash in money, and there are numerous sources that report that there was money literally floating around everywhere and unaccountable, it is almost certain that a lot of this money didn‘t wind up in the hands of the insurgents.
It is also very clear that a lot of this money, which is—has ostensibly gone towards the reconstruction of an Iraqi national army, has not in fact gone in that direction. It has gone to support the various militias which represent a centrifugal force in Iraq, which means that there will probably never be an Iraqi national army.
OLBERMANN: And in terms of there being an Iraqi national consensus of any kind, the idea that the money has gone disproportionately to the Shia and the Kurds, and that could be priming that country for even worse? For potential full scale civil war?
GIRALDI: Absolutely. Civil war may be slightly overstating the case. But certainly, it is money that is being used to create regional armies, if you want to call it that. And basically if the intention ever was to create a unified Iraqi state, the corruption and the fact that the money is unaccountable and uncontrolled has really tended to create something quite different.
OLBERMANN: Is there a way back from this? Is there something to do to even to begin correcting what‘s happened in terms of this—all this free-flowing and non-traced money?
GIRALDI: Well, history does not teach us a very good lesson on this, I‘m afraid. In situations where corruption gets out of control, as has happened in places like the former Soviet Union and other countries, it is very, very difficult to get it back under control. And normally, only a strong central government employing draconian measures, like, for example, in the Ukraine earlier this year, the president fired the entire police force because they were so corrupt. Those are the kinds of steps you have to take. Those are the measures you have to employ.
OLBERMANN: Extraordinary. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, a contributing editor, The American Conservative magazine. It‘s an extraordinary read. We recommend it to you. Thank you for sharing some of your time tonight, sir.
GIRALDI: Thank you.
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