Billions and Billions of Dollars Just Disappear in Iraq

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0208-02.htm

Billions and Billions of Dollars Just Disappear in Iraq
by Joseph L. Galloway

Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags.

This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to Baghdad.

That's $12 billion in cold, hard American cash, and no one, especially Bremer, seems to know where it went.

It may be an urban legend, but the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, is widely quoted as saying: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." If he didn't say it, he should have.

Bremer, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in totally screwing up the first two years of the Iraq Occupation, said that a lot of the cash was delivered to ministries of the Iraqi government to meet payrolls that were patently fraudulent.

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Meanwhile, the people's representatives, on both sides of the aisle, round up the contributions they need for re-election by putting themselves in the pockets of the very robber barons they're supposed to be investigating, interrogating and policing.

Perhaps we should let a no-bid cost-plus contract to Halliburton to construct large additions to the country club federal prisons to accommodate a population explosion in the years ahead. Or, for convenience sake, maybe we could just add a prison wing to the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

how appropriate..word of the day on email.

Start asking people just what good could have been done with that $$ spent well and accountable.

Start asking people if billions just disappearing is protecting America.

Start asking people if public servants who lose this sort of change should stay in power?

Get the chatter going, people. Get this mainstream so MSM is FORCED to talk about it!

K & R

since Waxman's been at this since Tuesday, it's old news? And now Anna Nicole will suck all the oxygen out of DU. :shrug:

Did DU let that take over too? ::sigh:: Some poster had a good idea with the 'shiny thing de jour forum' idea.

too stupid to even realize it...Why on earth would we send American dollars to Iraq when they had just rolled out their own new currency?

That really puts things in perspective

The democrats should make it a law, that wars are to be paid in units of tons of $100 bills. That way the public could really see how much money is going to waste.

Going to address this, Mr. Hannity? As expensive as flying a plane clear across the country is, I'm going to guess that even a Democrat couldn't run up $12 billion in expenses.

Or is this "old news," made so by your heroes, cronies and fellow travelers in Congress who couldn't be bothered to look into the disappearance of $12 billion in cash when they were running the joint into the ground? Every time Hannity has the audacity to yammer on about waste by this Democrat or that, someone should call in and just say "Twelve billion dollars in cash."

I personally think that's where most of the money went. I don't understand why Bremer would be so loathe to admit that...it's all a part of war, or at least war the way we wage it.

Personally, I wouldn't be terribly upset if he just came forward and said, "Yeah, so we spent about $1 billion of it to pay off Kurdish warlords. Another $2 billion went to informants in the insurgency for intel. Another $5 billion was given to crooked-ass Saudi building contractors as kickbacks and 'wait' money for rebuilding contracts. And the rest, well that is honestly a mystery."

It's not how I would spend the money (at all), and I am kind of upset that my money is partially funding this crooked junk, but at the same time, honesty would be a pleasant change. And I've never been in war, but I would imagine that this is the way things work: people will do some pretty messed-up stuff for upfront dollars.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

if $100 was missing from their till. I'm sure there is at least one in jail right now for exactly that.

There is no law but power in the US.