McCaskill on waste in Iraq and Afghanistan

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCUR) - An investigation published Wednesday, figures that at least 30 billion, but probably 60 billion dollars, have been wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senator Clair McCaskill thinks those figures are low, but she says it’s not going to be easy to cut the waste, fraud and abuse.

McCaskill, a Democrat, says contractors have a lot to do with the losses. They’ve become an enormous part of the defense effort, especially overseas, and one that she says they aren’t well regulated, not at all.

The Wartime Contracting Commission agrees, and suggests more than a dozen ways tighten scrutiny on contractors, weed out the careless, and criminals … and save billions a year.

 But McCaskill says some powerful companies will likely go to war over those reforms.

"These are very profitable corporations, that have relied, extensively in terms of their bottom line, on sloppy contracting procedures, that have been embraced by the Department of Defense, the Department of State and USAID," the Senator from Missouri said.

It isn’t just contractors. The report shows that project selection has caused a lot of the waste in Iraq and Afghanistan. Things like power plants that, once built, are not maintained.

Frank Morris, KCUR

Posted in: Claire McCaskill,Frank Morris,KCUR