WASHINGTON, July 30 (UPI) -- Auditors found the United States poured more than $200 million into facilities for an unpopular Iraqi police training program, a report released Monday found.
While Iraqi officials were losing interest in the police-training program, the United States spent $108 million building the Baghdad Police College Annex and $98 million on a facility in Basra where training will be discontinued, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found.
The spending, the investigators' report said, was "de facto waste," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The number of U.S. advisers for the training program, originally envisioned to require 350 advisers, has fallen to 36 this month.
The inspector general "acknowledges that gaining Iraqi commitment to the police training program has been exceeding difficult," the report stated.
The United States has spent about $8 billion to train, staff and equip Iraqi police since 2003, the government report said.
