US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has found his going somewhat tough recently, he has been put in a state of irritability by the scandal of US army's abuse of prisoners over the past few months. Unexpectedly, troubles have occurred one after another, on August 19 he received a letter from three senators of the Democratic Party, calling him to give explanations on the matter concerning the US-British Coalition Forces Temporary Administrative Authority's "loss" of US8.8 billion, a sum of money for Iraq's reconstruction.

According to a Reuter's recent report, a US government audit report soon to be released has shaken out a "surprising material": US$8.8 billion of the funds for Iraq's rebuilding under the control of US-British Coalition Forces Temporary Administering Authority has suddenly disappeared! At present, lots of Iraqi people living in the abyss of suffering are waiting for this sum of money to eke out a living and many heavily damaged infrastructure facilities in Iraq are waiting for this sum of money for repair and reconstruction. This is a sum of "life-saving money" for the Iraqis, but unexpectedly the money has "evaporated" from the hands of the coalition forces temporary authority.

Where has this huge amount of reconstruction funds gone? The US audit department has discovered that the coalition forces temporary authority, in utter disregard of the needs of the Iraqi people and in serious violation of the humanistic principles, have appropriated the money to themselves. For example, the expenditure on wages said to have been paid to several thousand "government employees"--it is a sheer fiction. This falsely reported amount of wages naturally has fallen into the pockets of certain people. Take another example, the coalition forces temporary authority claimed wages were paid to 74,000 public security personnel, but this figure simply can't be confirmed, the authority took out a payroll of 8,206 public security personnel, but only 603 of them are verified.

After the Saddam Hussein regime was overthrown by the US-British coalition forces, the United Nations passed the resolution 1843, authorizing the coalition forces temporary administering authority to take charge of the Iraqi development fund, which mainly includes revenue from Iraqi oil, frozen Iraqi assets from foreign governments as well as incomes from the UN "oil for food" items, totaling US$19 billion, but up to June 28 this year, only US$0.9 billion was taken over by the Iraqi provisional government.

After the prisoner-abuse scandal, there arose the doubtful case of embezzlement. It seems that recently the United States is plagued by too many troubles in Iraq. Let's see how the US Defense Department will explain the case.

The above article, written by Ren Yan, was published on Page 3 of People's Daily on August 25, 2004 and translated by People's Daily Online.