FIRST IN A SERIES:

For example:

Last year, 30 agency employees earned more than the $165,200 salary of a senator or a congressman with seven earning $100,000 or more above their salaries. More than two dozen earned more than the $174,900 in salary and benefits paid last year to General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. One SIGIR inspector, who had a $142,000 base salary, earned $346,017 last year, in part by claiming more than 1,200 hours of overtime.

 At least 30 SIGIR employees charged between 800 and 1,400 hours of overtime and compensatory time in 2006 which is almost nine months of additional work stuffed into the year. "The number of hours didn’t wash," said a senior SIGIR official. "It’s physically and mentally impossible to work that many hours."

And remember……we are only talking about SIGIR employees which is the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of non-military workers earning a full time living in the Iraqi war zone! 

And adding insult to injury, because they have been doing such a great job, the SIGIR position, which was initially intended to last for only 10 months after 80 percent of the reconstruction funds had been contracted out, was extended several times due to support in the United States Congress.

You can always count on the United States Congress to give their full support to an enterprise that does not work and bilks the American people out of their hard earned money. I mean, what’s another billion dollars hear and there, right?

Next in our series: “The 10 Most Brazen War Profiteers” 

Employee allegations have prompted four government probes into the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), including an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors into the agency’s financial practices and an assortment of other improprieties.