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Waxman Raps Ex-Iraq Chief Over Aid Funds
Bowen, responding to Bremer's assertions that he was operating without a functioning Iraqi government, said, "That situation screams for more oversight, more controls." But the inspector general told the hearing he couldn't say whether insurgents got any of the funds.
Bremer painted the bleakest possible picture of the situation he faced.
  House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., left, greets L. Paul Bremer III, the former U.S. occupation chief in Iraq on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, prior to the committee's hearing on waste, fraud and abuse dealing with Iraqi reconstruction. (Susan Walsh - AP) |
Looters were running wild. Buildings were burning. Competent government officials had fled or were on the run. Civil servants had not been paid for months. Banks were closed and only cash would keep the economy from total collapse.
Waxman said up to $12 billion in Iraqi money was converted to dollars, held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and shipped in pallets to Baghdad that totaled 363 tons.
"Millions of Iraqi families depended on civil service salaries and pensions," Bremer said. "It was clear we had to get this Iraqi money in the hands of people immediately."
Bremer acknowledged that he and the U.S. government made mistakes. He said he mistakenly described the Iraqi Army as being disbanded _ leaving an incorrect impression because "there was not a single unit of the Iraqi army standing in place. "
He said too many government workers were fired because he mistakenly let Iraqis carry out his policy of dismissing only 1 percent of the government officials under Saddam Hussein.
And Bremer said he believed from the start that the best way to provide security was to increase the number of U.S. troops beyond the numbers sent to Iraq.
