No, really, I want my money back.

About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.

More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.

source: Auditors: Billions squandered in Iraq

$10 billion. Think about it folks. This is what it looks like with its "wheels" on: $10,000,000,000. The Bush administration has already spent $350,000,000,000 on this fiasco and is passing the golden gallon-sized chalice, looking for an additional handout in the amount of $100,000,000: of your money. My money. Our money.

Maybe it's unseemly to speak in terms of "wasted" lives--3,000-plus, not counting the destroyed and devastated lives of family members now grieving those fallen, not counting the lives that will never be, uh, "quite the same" (read the War Amputees Blog lately?). PTSD? Put The Sonsabitches on Depakot!

When it comes to the wounded-or shall we just call them the "walking dead"? (oh, I guess that doesn't work either, cause too many of them can't even walk)--we really have no idea how many lives are involved because the U.S. lacks mechanism to accurately track troops wounded in Iraq. What the hell else does the U.S. lack? Universal health care. Adequate funding for public schools. A social safety net to bring anywhere from 2.3 to 3.5 million homeless people in from the cold.

And the civilian body count? By the time I am finished typing this sentence, the stats will already be "dated," so you may as well just see for yourself, here: "We don't do body counts,"-so sayeth CentCom. 

OK. So let's not talk about "wasted" lives. But what about the money? Waste not, want not? Yaright.

GAO. Government Accountability Office. That's what they call it now, and I don't recall exactly when Bu$hCo changed the name, but it used to be the Government Accounting Office. Ironic, innit? Not a lick of accountability in sight, and they can't even account for their inability to count. No, not ironic: Orwellian. We don't do body counts. In fact, we can't even count. You don't count. I don't count. What counts is that the King in the counting house can count on you (and me) to just keep those tax dollars rolling. In. Roll'em, roll'em, roll'em! Regardless of whether or not "we" ever get out. Of Iraq. Regardless of whether they ever get their asses out. Of the counting house.

G. A. O. -

G.et your

A.sses

O.uttathere!

Outta Iraq. Outta office. Go play in the fucking street, man!

Yeah. Tax time's just around the corner. Again. I'm in the market for a new accountant: mine's obviously a Republican who just can't understand that for me, as someone who spent a decade living in the social market economy of Germany where I got a slightly better return on my tax dollars, it's not that I am opposed to paying my fair share of taxes: au contraire, I'm more about paying more than my "fair" share: "Give till it hurts," that's my motto-a bad habit I picked up "over there."

I do sometimes wish I could get a tax write-off for the hundreds of dollars I hand out to the homeless (and others impacted by the Roll'emIn-n-Smoke'emOutEconomics of Bu$hCo) every year. I'm well on my way to getting a tax write-off for the thousands I invest in picking up the slack in the wake of No Child Left Alive, but still. My pockets just aren't that deep.

Already in September 2005, Halliburton's stocks had tripled in value since the beginning of the war in Iraq. Halliburton Profits Skyrocket, and so does U.S. national debt: currently at $8,725,748,299,672.71.

Halliburton's in the black, we're in the red, and neither the GAO nor CentCom tell us how many Americans are thinking they'd be better off dead.

If you're not a free- or "perma"-lancer, I suppose, it's easier to just "look the other way" because they put your tax dollars in their coffers before you ever get your hands on them. If you're good with numbers (which I am decidedly not), or if you can afford to hire an accountant who is, you might even get a rebate check in the mail and that will make you feel better about these statistics. But I'm a freelancer. And it's that time of year again. The time when I make that dread appointment with the accountant, sit there waiting for the verdict, then write that check in the amount of how many thousands of dollars?

Last year, the IRS screwed up and, once I decided I'd rather just pay the bill in full than continue to give them interest and late fees, they  overpaid me on the interest and have since sent me a bill in the amount of $44.71. I think I'll write them a check for $45.71: keep the change, chumps.

I. R. S.

I.

R.esent this.

S.hit.

Yeah, I do. Really, I do.

If this was my constitutional guarantee, I want my money back.