The Maddoff ponzi scheme is fraud of the first order. Billions have been lost, but there is an even bigger and nastier case of fraud out there. The Independent reports, that some $ 50 billion have been lost in corruption and outright theft in Iraq. And the culprits seem to be US Army officials.

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme. (read story)

Unlike the Madoff crime story, which affected mostly people who could lose millions and still be wealthy, this crime had more vulnerable victims. The Iraqi people who are still not having electricity, clean water, functioning hospitals. And American soldiers, too. There’s the shoddy infrastructure they were faced with and there was the anger among Iraqis that helped fuel the civil war which cost so many soldiers’ lives. A few made a fortune from their blood.

If I knew how, I’d create a BushcrimesWiki (if there isn’t any yet) to keep track of all the misdeeds of your former President’s administration. If the Democrats refuse to look, as Paul Jamiol put so aptly in his cartoon, it’s up to us to create the pressure necessary to get Bush/Cheney tried in a court of law. The buck ultimately stops at their door.