Report: $20B of Iraq's Oil Revenue Unaccounted For By U.S.

The Bush administration handed over power to Iraq without properly accounting for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money. This according to a new report published Monday by Christian Aid - a leading British charity.
The report points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend Iraqi oil revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people.

Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes: "Think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true."

Anthea Lawson, one of the author's of Christian Aid's new report titled "Fuelling Suspicion: The Coalition and Iraq's Oil Billions."

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