reposting a classic

Most. Depressing. Post. Ever. (Iraq Spending Out of Control)
by pontificator
posted on dailykos blog
Fri Aug 04, 2006

Harper's has published an interview with former White House Budget Official Gordan Adams that sets forth in disturbing detail how absolutely out of control the spending process has gotten for the Iraq War.
First, the numbers.

So far:

$437 billion [has been spent] on Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the war on terror since 2001.
Over seventy percent (70%) of this amount has been spent on Iraq alone, which I calculate to equal at least $306 billion, or more than a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States.

Moreover:
The Congressional Research Service estimates conservatively that we might spend another $371 billion on these operations through 2016.
That's over $1,000 more for each man woman and child.

But the numbers are the least of the problem. The real issue here is the appalling lack of oversight into how this money is spent.

Rather than going through the normal budget process, spending on the Iraq war is done entirely through "emergency supplementals," which bypass all the ordinary controls that eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.

Even worse, despite Congressional requests, the Bush administration has refused to offer any after-the-fact accounting for what happened with this money.

Well, you might say, this lack of oversight certainly is troubling. But isn't this what always happens with war? Aren't wars always financed through this emergency supplemental procedure?

Absolutely not. The Bush administration's lack of financial accountability in financing the Iraq war is historically unprecedented.

Read the whole thing. (Google it) I was so upset after finishing the piece, I was literally shaking. The Cheney Administration is steamrolling Congress and the American people to rob them of their hard earned dollars in order to fund their destructive pet projects, and they have smashed through all systems of oversight and accountability to do so.

This needs to stop now.
November 2006 will be just the first step in stopping this trainwreck.