Editorial: Billions out the door

Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

Finally, Congress is asking hard questions about the billions of dollars that flowed from the U.S. into Iraq that were never recorded on accounting ledgers.

For years there have been stories about wads of cash that either disappeared or were simply handed over to Iraqis or American contractors, but the Republican-controlled Congress never launched formal inquiries.

But now, with Congress under Democratic control, answers are being sought.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., began hearings on Tuesday. The first person to appear for questioning was L. Paul Bremer, who headed the former Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004.

Bremer held high-level posts with the State Department from 1966 to 1989, when he retired from government service to manage a worldwide consulting business founded by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. For his service in Iraq, President Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

But Bremer's post-Saddam Hussein leadership, which included his orders to disband the Iraqi army and fire thousands of civil servants, is now more identified with the bloody anarchy that has overtaken the country.

Certainly one of the questions surrounding his time in Iraq, and one Waxman's committee is boring in on, concerns the way he handled his budget of more than $20 billion.

Two years ago Stuart Bowen, the White House-appointed inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, issued a report stating that under Bremer's watch, nearly $9 billion had been doled out to various agencies of the new Iraqi government - with none of it subjected to accounting controls.

According to a report by Waxman's committee, the total amount of unaccountable cash distributed under Bremer's watch is now estimated at $12.7 billion.

The money came from a combination of U.S. funds and Iraqi assets that had been seized during Saddam's regime. According to Bloomberg News, Bremer told the committee Tuesday that paying for contracts and Iraqi salaries by cash was necessary in a country where there was no practical banking system or government payroll.

We hope the committee, which is scheduled next to question several major contractors, digs further into this explanation. Shoveling that much money out the door, with no controls in a country swimming in violence and corruption, is, at best, an act of gross incompetence.