Donald Trump is facing criticism for comments that seemed to disparage some U.S. soldiers for having stolen recovery funds during the Iraq war.
“Iraq, crooked as hell. How about bringing baskets of money? Millions and millions of dollars and handing it out? I want to know, who are the soldiers that had that job because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be,” he said.
His spokesperson claimed that Trump was referring to Iraqi soldiers, but it would have been American soldiers distributing the funds he seems to be describing and he’s made reference to American soldiers in this way in the past.
“I want to know who are the soldiers carrying suitcases with $50m?” Trump said in September. “How stupid are we? I wouldn’t be surprised if those soldiers, if the cash didn’t get there.”
This was widely understood to be referring to U.S. soldiers who were responsible for distributing recovery money in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump sounds like he once again doesn’t want to stand by his own comments, but if he did he would not be entirely wrong!
Broadly disparaging U.S. soldiers in Iraq would obviously not only be a bad idea politically but also unfair to the vast majority of soldiers who served honorably, but there were some soldiers who did steal significant amounts of money in that country.
As the Center for Public Integrity reported and Slate published last year, tens of millions of dollars were stolen by some U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan through bribery, theft, and rigged contracts.
From that report:
[A]t least 115 enlisted personnel and military officers [have been] convicted since 2005 of committing theft, bribery, and contract-rigging crimes valued at $52 million during their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a comprehensive tally of court records by the Center for Public Integrity.
Many of these crimes grew out of shortcomings in the military’s management of the deployments that experts say are still present: a heavy dependence on cash transactions, a hasty award process for high-value contracts, loose and harried oversight within the ranks, and a regional culture of corruption that proved seductive to the Americans troops transplanted there.
….
The magnitude of additional losses from fraud, waste, and abuse by contractors, civilians, and allied foreign troops in Afghanistan has never been tallied, but officials probing such crimes say the total is in the billions of dollars. And those who investigate and prosecute military wrongdoing say the convictions so far constitute a small portion of the crimes they think were committed by U.S. military personnel in the two countries.
Former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen, who served as the principal watchdog for wrongdoing in Iraq from 2004 to 2013, said he suspected “the fraud … among U.S. military personnel and contractors was much higher” than what he and his colleagues were able to prosecute. John F. Sopko, his contemporary counterpart in Afghanistan, said his agency has probably uncovered less than half of the fraud committed by members of the military in Afghanistan.
You should read the rest of that report if you’d like to revel in Trump’s momentary not wrongness.
