The Boston Globe reported last April that the US apparently not only hired dishonest contractors, but managed to pass immunity laws to prevent anyone from holding those contractors accountable:

American contractors swindled hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds, but so far there is no way for Iraq’s government to recoup the money, according to US investigators and civil attorneys tracking fraud claims against contractors.

Courts in the United States are beginning to force contractors to repay reconstruction funds stolen from the American government. But legal roadblocks have prevented Iraq from recovering funds that were seized from the Iraqi government by the US-led coalition and then paid to contractors who failed to do the work.

A US law that allows citizens to recover money from dishonest contractors protects only the US government, not foreign governments.

In addition, an Iraqi law created by the Coalition Provisional Authority days before it ceded sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004 gives American contractors immunity from prosecution in Iraq.

Some of the examples given in the article are hard to believe. Old Iraqi cranes spray-painted to look like new ones? Trucks that did not work? Importing gasoline into Iraq for Halliburton to rebuild the oil infrastructure? And then there are the typical cases of diverting money from schools and police stations to cars, guns and personal accounts…