Contracting fraud in the Iraq and Afghan wars reached $31-60 billion

Evidence

All this base spending has been marked by spiraling expenditures, the increased awarding of noncompetitive contracts (and contracts lacking incentives to control costs), and outright fraud. Even companies with well-established histories of fraud and abuse have repeatedly been awarded noncompetitive sweetheart contracts. Financial irregularities have been so common that any attempt to document the misappropriation of taxpayer funds at overseas bases would be a mammoth effort. The Commission on Wartime Contracting, which Congress established to investigate waste and abuse, has estimated that there has been 31 billion to 60 billion in contracting fraud in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars alone, with most of it involving bases in and around the two countries. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 677

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into the reader’s core argument that bases harm America by wasting taxpayer funds; pairs with the $385 billion total. — connects to: Contractors made up half of all deployed personnel in Iraq by 2003
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 677

Broader Connections

• Contractors made up half of all deployed personnel in Iraq by 2003 #corroborates (0.40)