Tom Harkin: “This has had an extremely negative impact on our work in Iraq. This fund was responsible for paying the salaries of…”

“This has had an extremely negative impact on our work in Iraq. This fund was responsible for paying the salaries of hundreds of thousands of government employees, such as teachers, health workers, and government administrators; it supported the Iraqi defense and police forces; and it helped repair Iraq's dilapidated infrastructure. So the loss of $8.8 billion hurts our mission in Iraq. There is real urgency to the spending issue. On Meet the Press recently, we heard from retired GEN Barry McCaffrey, who just returned from Iraq and who only last week advised the President and his national security team at the White House on the situation in Iraq. He spoke about the importance of spending our resources efficiently on Iraq economic reconstruction. General McCaffrey said: Unemployment is a bigger problem than the Iraqi insurgent force. We spent $18 billion on economic reconstruction. There is only $1.6 billion left in the pipeline. When the money runs out, in my judgment, we just lost the war. But money on a massive scale--$8.8 billion, as the inspector general has said--has been ``lost into thin air.'' We can't account for it. While this was not all U.S. money, it symbolizes the magnitude of the corruption we are facing. We don't know where it has gone. Imagine the critical things we could have done with that $8.8 billion to help win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. This chart shows what the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund goes for.…”