From Wednesday's Washington Post, "$1.9 Billion of Iraq's Money Goes to U.S. Contractors":

Halliburton and other U.S. contractors are being paid at least $1.9 billion from Iraqi funds under an arrangement set by the U.S.-led occupation authority, according to a review of documents and interviews with government agencies, companies and auditors.

Most of the money is for two controversial deals that originally had been financed with money approved by the U.S. Congress but later shifted to Iraqi funds governed by fewer restrictions and less rigorous oversight.

Officials of the former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) have said most of the contracts paid from Iraqi money — obtained from sales of Iraqi oil and frozen foreign accounts from Saddam Hussein's regime — went to Iraqi companies, for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

Through the first 14 months of the occupation, the CPA provided little detail about specific contracts and the identities of companies that won them, citing security concerns, so it has been impossible to know whether these promises were kept.

The CPA ran Iraq from May 2003 until the U.S. handed over power to an interim Iraqi government June 28.

The CPA has said it awarded about 2,000 contracts with Iraqi money. Its inspector general compiled records for the major contracts, which it defined as those worth $5 million or more each. Analysis of those and other records shows 19 of 37 major contracts paid for with Iraqi money went to U.S. companies and at least 85 percent of the total $2.26 billion was obligated to U.S. companies.

That analysis and several audit reports released in recent weeks shed new light on how the occupation authority handled the Iraqi money it controlled. They show the CPA at times violated its own rules, authorizing Iraqi money when it didn't have a quorum or proper Iraqi representation at meetings and kept such sloppy records that the paperwork for several major contracts could not be found.

During the first half of the occupation, the CPA depended heavily on no-bid contracts that were questioned by auditors. And the shifting of projects that were publicly announced to be financed by U.S. money to Iraqi money prompted the Iraqi finance minister to complain that the "ad hoc" process put the CPA in danger of losing the trust of the people.

Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was paid $1.66 billion from the Iraqi money, primarily to cover the cost of importing fuel from Kuwait. The job was tacked on to a no-bid contract that was the subject of several investigations after allegations that a subcontractor for Houston-based KBR overcharged by up to $61 million for the fuel.