A non-governmental panel has found (as if we didn’t know) that the U.S. government has lost billions of dollars to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is, of course, that the U.S. taxpayer has lost billions of dollars to U.S. contractors.
The bipartisan commission, created by Congress in 2008, estimated that at least $31 billion and as much as $60 billion has been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade due to lax oversight of contractors, poor planning, inadequate competition and corruption.
The lobbyists for these private-sector contractors usually run circles around their government prey.