Ted Poe: “Oh where, oh where has the American air base gone? Oh where or where can it be? With its 6,000 phantom troops and 32…”

“Oh where, oh where has the American air base gone? Oh where or where can it be? With its 6,000 phantom troops and 32 million missing dollars, oh where, oh where can it be? Madam Speaker, let me explain. Corruption has struck again, and just like times in the past, it's at the taxpayers' expense. Government investigators recently uncovered the newest scam in contracting. This time it's a phantom air base in Iraq, purchased by the U.S. taxpayers at the tune of $32 million. Madam Speaker, here it is, or here it's supposed to be. This is a photograph of the location in Iraq where the air base is, or where it was supposed to be built. But you can see that there is nothing to see because it was never built. Last month the Inspector General at the Defense Department released a report about money spent to help train and equip Iraqi military and police forces. The contracting project in question was awarded to Ellis Environmental Group, a U.S. company based out of Florida, in 2006. The U.S. Air Force paid the company $32 million for this project, this air base in Iraq. The construction contract would have involved the creation of barracks and offices for 6,000 Iraqi troops in Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province. But the project had to be abandoned before anything was ever built when the Iraqi Defense Ministry failed to obtain this desert land for the base. So what happened to the $32 million the Air Force doled out to Ellis Environmental? The alarming answer is no one knows.”