Good work if you can get it, part 1,832,347

Tired of your day job? Not making enough cash by actually working for a living? Would you like to make over a billion dollars next year? Sure! Who wouldn't? Now you can too. Just become part of our Operation Iraqi StrikeItRich Freedom. Apparently, somebody was a little too tempted by the idea of more than a billion dollars in US taxpayer money laying around in the Iraq Defense Ministry and decided to steal the whole thing.

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.

The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.

This interesting article goes on to indicate that the profits of some ludicrous weapons purchase transactions may have wound up in the hands of corrupt Iraqi officials, ambitious American overseers, or a combination of both. The only thing that seems sure is that the money is gone and the Iraq army is holding a bunch of gear which is nearly worthless.

Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.

There has been so much noise made by the right wing about "UN Corruption" in the oil for food scandal, I am eagerly awaiting their quick action to hold accountable those responsible for this theft, which apparently has now lost more money than the entire Oil for Food deal did.

The sum missing over an eight-month period in 2004 and 2005 is the equivalent of the $1.8bn that Saddam allegedly received in kick- backs under the UN's oil-for-food programme between 1997 and 2003. The UN was pilloried for not stopping this corruption. The US military is likely to be criticised over the latest scandal because it was far better placed than the UN to monitor corruption.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

We're waiting.