The New York Times is reporting on a developing scandal that may be the final disgusting chapter in the crime against humanity that is the Iraq occupation. Fraud by United States officers charged with redeveloping a devastated country may exceed the avarice of Bernie Madoff and company. Once the full extent is known, the looting of Iraq by US officials and contractors will probably be the biggest fraud in American history[1]. In 2004-05 the entire Iraqi military budget of $1.3 billion was drained from the Iraqi Defense Ministry, a theft blamed on Iraqis, but the Ministry was largely under the control of US military officials at the time. Federal investigators have subpoenaed the bank records of former Army officer Anthony B. Bell who was responsible for contracting reconstruction efforts in 2003-04. Air Force officer Ronald W. Hirtle, a senior contracting official in Baghdad in 2004, is also a person of interest to federal investigators. The murder of businessman Dale C. Stoffel outside of Taiji is being reopened. Stoffel had been granted limited immunity in return for information about a bribery ring within the Green Zone. According to the dead informant, tens of thousands of dollars in bribes were delivered in pizza boxes sent to contracting officers. Despite $125 billion appropriated for the reconstruction of Iraq, there is very little evidence of work underway outside of the US embassy compound. Only the palm trees seem to get planted and replanted in the median strip of Baghdad boulevards. It does not take peculiar insight to understand why the Army is experiencing the highest number of suicides among soldiers since record keeping began. To risk your life for such a morally flawed endeavor must be very disheartening indeed.[1] The exact value of missing reconstruction money may never be known, but the special inspector general appointed to investigate potential fraud in Iraq suggests in his report that it may exceed $50 billion.