"Billions of dollars of their money disappeared….I'm saying what difference does it make?"

So saith David Oliver, the former Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority director of management and budget to the BBC last year; this week a House Committee on Government Reform hearing tried to grill both Oliver and his boss L. Paul Bremer III to clear that picture up just a little bit. Daniel Schulman at Mother Jones has more; the upshot is, the U.S. has no idea what happened to $8.8 billion "doled out by the CPA to Iraq's fledgling government ministries between October 2003 and June 2004." And it's very probable that Oliver's cynicism–what difference does it make?–is precisely correct.