
Iraqs Missing Billions
Nearly 20 billion dollars of Iraq's own oil revenue passed into the hands of the Coalition Provisional Authority after the 2003 invasion, meant to rebuild the country the war had broken. Reporter Ali Fadhil, working for Guardian Films, traces where that money actually went, and finds shipping-container loads of shrink-wrapped cash handed out with little paperwork and less oversight. Paul Bremer, who ran the CPA, pushed to get funds spent quickly, and Fadhil's reporting suggests speed mattered more than results: contracts signed, invoices approved, and yet water treatment plants and hospitals that were supposedly rebuilt still barely function. He talks to Iraqi families living with the consequences, children sick from contaminated water, clinics without basic supplies, in neighborhoods where the paperwork says the infrastructure was fixed years ago. The film follows the paper trail as far as it goes and stops where the trail does, at contracts nobody can fully account for. It leaves the reader with a plain question: eighteen billion dollars later, why does so little of it show up on the ground?