Foreign firms bidding to help rebuild Iraq were often ordered to take on Iraqi officials as partners in order to secure a deal. U.S. tax dollars sent to arm Iraqi soldiers in the fight against Al Qaeda would frequently vanish into Swiss bank accounts. The weapons would never materialize—or worse, they would end up in the hands of America’s enemies. Graft and fraud were so widespread, in fact, that they helped pave the way for an entirely new threat: An energy project was unable to be completed because the territory where it was located was soon overrun by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, better known as ISIS.
Corruption and fraud created a failed state in Iraq—and ISIS
