Follow the money, if you can

Here’s a quiz question. A Sept. 23 Times article, “Army Corps Faked Budget Entries,” begins: “The Army Corps of Engineers improperly created fake entries in government ledgers to maintain control over hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for the reconstruction of _______________.” The name in the blank should be:

a. New Orleans

b. Iraq

c. the Republican Party

d. classified to protect national security.

Your guess is as good as mine.

DAVID DATZ

Altadena

*

Mystery solved! Thanks to the Corps of Engineers budget accounting procedures, we now understand the modus operandi (sources and methods) of the brilliant administration of the cabal of Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III that “lost” nearly $9 billion in the organized chaos that followed the preemptive attack on Iraq.

JOHN MCCARTHY

Los Angeles