8.8 billion dollars. Just gone. $8.8 billion. Who let this happen? When will this madness end? From [1] AFP, with thanks to JE:

Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says $US8.8 billion ($A11.91 billion) is unaccounted for because oversight on the part of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the entity governing Iraq after the war, "was relatively nonexistent," the CBS report said....

With no financial infrastructure, checks and money transfers were not possible, so the Coalition kept billions in cash to pay for its multitude of projects.

"Fresh, new, crisp, unspent, just-printed 100-dollar bills. It was the Wild West," Willis was quoted by CBS as saying.

Where's Marshal Dillon?