The State Department lied to us about the cost of rebuilding Iraq. Really is that news to anyone?

The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.

This is the kind of government that the Republicans have been providing for us since 2000. Is this the kind of thing that we want to continue for the next two years?

Here is but one example.

The hospital’s construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency “was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million,” the inspector general wrote in his report.

The rest was reclassified as overhead, or “indirect costs.” According to a contracting officer at the agency who was cited in the report, the agency “did not report these costs so it could stay within the $50 million authorization.”

If you are as tired of this crap as I am then do not hesitate when it comes election time, vote Democrat! We need to investigate this entire group of criminals and put a stop to the graft and corruption that now permeates our government.

DEMOCRATS IN 2006! It is the only way to get our country back.