Michael Moore is Fat

Every now and then I'd like to see the conservatarians care about stuff like this at least a little more than what some teacher does somewhere. It's their pet war and their tax money after all.

WASHINGTON - In the first action of its kind, a federal jury found Thursday that a private security company bilked the U.S.-led government in Iraq out of millions of dollars.

Custer Battles, which has had offices in Virginia and Rhode Island, was found to have used shell companies, fake invoices and even stolen forklifts in an elaborate scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority that oversaw Iraq after the invasion.

Though a handful of other contractors involved in the reconstruction face criminal charges, the ruling marks the first time that a federal jury has ordered a contractor in Iraq to pay back purloined funds to the government.

After a three-week trial, the jury found Custer Battles responsible for 37 separate fraudulent acts, meaning that the firm could face payments and penalties totaling more than $10 million.

"There is an orgy of greed among contractors in Iraq, and the Bush administration is for all practical purposes participating in it," said Alan Grayson, lawyer for the whistle-blowers who filed the case. "They have done nothing to get the taxpayers' money back. They've done nothing to punish the wrongdoers."