Government squanders $300 million of your money

Before spending $300 million of your money, shouldn't the government ensure that the program is going to be a success? As this article states, the Government Accounting Office reports that the U.S. spent $300 million the past two years to improve the capacity of Iraq's ministries. But the effort has been stalled by corruption, poor security, a shortage of competent workers, and other problems. In fact, almost half of Iraqi government employees fail to show up for work each day.

Amazingly, both the U.S. and the Iraqi governments were asleep at the switch, as "nobody noticed" that the Iraqis were not using the new computerized accounting system the U.S. taxpayers paid for. Finally, after a month, somebody figured it out that the Iraqis were still using a paper system. Maybe the guy who noticed should be promoted.

Government loses $1.2 billion of your money

The inefficiency of government at all levels is amazing. They can't even keep tabs on the money they take from us to spend around the world. Of course, we're in the police training business, per the Constitution, right?

Read this article about how the government just can't seem to find the money they were going to spend training the Iraqi police force.