DemocracyNow.org - A new U.S. government report has found that much of the U.S. taxpayer money used for Iraq's reconstruction has likely been squandered. In what has been called their final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds pinpointed a number of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history. The report concluded the precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known. While much of Iraq is still struggling to recover from the 2003 invasion and occupation, the country's oil sector is quickly expanding with the help of foreign investors including Exxon Mobil and BP. We're joined by Greg Muttitt, whose new book, "Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq," takes a close look at how energy interests played a crucial role in the U.S. invasion. "The reason they created a disaster was because there were constantly U.S. interests behind it," Muttitt says.

Part 2

Published on Jul 16, 2012 by democracynow