Good question
How has the US been spending other people's billions?
Simon Tisdall
Tuesday July 20, 2004
The Guardian
Henry Waxman is an awkward customer. For 30 years, this California congressman has probed, badgered and embarrassed US administrations of every hue.
As the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives' government reform committee, Congress's principal standing investigative panel, he is a difficult man to ignore.
Right now, Mr Waxman has a question on Iraq. In fact, he has several - and in typically robust fashion, he is demanding answers. What he wants to know is whether the Bush administration has been fiddling with Iraq's oil revenues.
He wrote to the Republican chairman of the reform committee on July 9, suggesting there was a serious case to answer. Subpoenas should be issued, he said, "to investigate potential mismanagement of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) by the United States".
The DFI was set up after last year's invasion as the depository for Iraq's multi-billion-dollar oil revenues and was administered, until June 28, by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - with notional UN oversight.
In particular, Mr Waxman is curious about "the [Bush] administration's last-minute 'draw-down' of billions of dollars from the DFI for unspecified expenses" prior to last month's transfer of sovereignty. "For example, $1bn [about £550m] was withdrawn from the DFI during the last month of the CPA's existence for unspecified 'security' purposes."
The administration provided no information about how these funds would be spent, Mr Waxman says, and has yet to do so.
