CHANNEL4 DISPATCHES: IRAQ'S MISSING BILLIONS PART 2 OF 3

Details are now emerging of how other US companies massively overcharged for their work and failed to deliver on what they promised, and how contracts worth millions were subcontracted down to locals who were paid a fraction of what the big US companies were paid for the work.

Hospitals were left with sewage floating in the kitchens and operating theatres, without the most basic life saving equipment despite contracts worth millions being handed out to US companies by Paul Bremer's interim government. Now Bremer's successor Dan Speckhard has said in response to this that it is: "water under the bridge"

This week, as Iraq descends even further into hell, one wonders if the prospect of civil war could have been avoided if there had been a little more electricity, fresh water and the promise of better hospitals. The Iraqi people desperately needed some assurance; some proof that life might just get better, it never came.

When the two men who make up Custer Battles - Scott Custer and Michael Battles, (who ran unsuccessfully as a Republican Congressional candidate in 2002) - arrived in Iraq, one former workmate said they didn't have enough money between them to pay the $15 airport tax. Within months they had contracts worth $37.5 million for security and transport work.