The NYT is reporting on cash going missing after the deaths of foreign aid workers in Iraq.

Now, we were told one of the reasons that they needed to just dump cash in large quantities in this country, in an unregulated and difficult-to-audit way was that there simply wasn't the time or infrastructure to implement proper accounting procedures.

Well, this is what happens when you dump cash in a place where there are lots of desperate people with guns.

The killing of Fern Holland, a human rights worker from Oklahoma, remains unsolved and as mysterious as it was when her body was found riddled with bullets on a desolate stretch of road near one of Iraq's southern holy cities in March 2004.

Now, federal investigators are grappling with a second mystery: what happened to hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash issued by American authorities to Ms. Holland and Robert J. Zangas, a press officer who died in the same attack near Karbala, in the days before their deaths?

Financial records from the American-run compound in Hilla, the south-central Iraqi city where Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas were based, have established that much or all of that money - issued for things like programs to train Iraqis in democratic governance and construction of women's rights centers that Ms. Holland was setting up - was either missing or improperly accounted for after their deaths.

But wait, was it Iraqi desperados killing these poor people for money? Oh shit, no, it looks like it was Americans.

American investigators are trying to determine whether that money was stolen as part of the web of bribery, kickbacks, theft and conspiracy that they have laid out in a series of indictments and court papers describing corruption by American officials in Hilla in 2003 and 2004, according to officials involved in the inquiry. That corruption case, centered on reconstruction efforts, has led to four arrests, and more are expected.
...
One of those, Robert J. Stein Jr., a former American occupation official in Hilla, pleaded guilty in February to five counts of bribery, conspiracy and other charges, and could serve up to 30 years in prison. Mr. Stein disbursed the cash to Ms. Holland and Mr. Zangas and was involved in accounting for it after their deaths.

The name of another American arrested in the corruption case, Philip H. Bloom, a businessman who was working in Iraq, appeared in contracting documents involving changes in Ms. Holland's projects after her death. He pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy, bribery and money laundering last month. Two Army Reserve officers, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, who oversaw projects in Hilla, have been arrested and charged with accepting bribes.

Hmm. It would be one thing if Iraqis, operating as insurgents or members of organized criminal gangs, had done this, but it looks like it was Americans behind the crimes.

It is pathetic that the attitude that such measures aren't needed for Americans because we're first-worlders and beyond reproach. It is clear that greed is universal, and not just restricted to those poor uncivilized Iraqis. The war profiteers that spread across Iraq like a plague of locusts are justification enough for better management and accounting of the tax payer dollars that flooded Iraq following the invasion. Until we stop throwing money at Iraq like some underperforming inner-city school, expect most of it to end up in the pockets of scumbags like these. Scum like this will always show up to scam the weak or idealistic out of well-intentioned largesse.