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Anthony Cordesman, the CSIS Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, was quoted by the New York Times, "Iraq Spending Rules Ignored, Pentagon Says."
May 23, 2008

Associated Programs:

Burke Chair in Strategy

Related Research Focus:

Middle East & North Africa

Experts :

Anthony H. Cordesman

Excerpt:

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

"This report is further documentation of the fact that the United States had absolutely no preparation to use contracting on the scale that it needed either at the military or aid level in going to war in Iraq," said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

 

“We had really allowed ourselves to become more and more dependent on contractors in peacetime,” said Mr. Cordesman, who spoke in a telephone interview on Thursday. “We were unprepared to use contractors in wartime, and all of this had an immense impact.”

 

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