*343 tons, what do you get
Another day older and a hunderd more dead
Saint Peter don’t you call me 'cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the Iraqi war.
Bum bum bum bum bum-pe-bum-bum
*
And you know whats coming next, you just know it!
“Well, gee, sure we’d all love to fund health care and educations, but, gosh, we spent all our money on the War on Terr!..”
I am not defending this amazing lack of accountability, it is just pathetic. But let’s not confuse the issue, this was not US taxpayer moeny, this was Iraqi money that was being given out without any accountability. So it isn’t the case where the money could have been better spent on US VA hospitals and US health care, etc. That of course would be the other billions of dollars from US taxpayers we have wasted on this idiotic war.
Yes, and it was also about $5.5 billion, rather than the $20 billion stated in the OP. At a gram a bill, that still comes out to 300 and some tons, depending on denomination; more than enough to circle the world at the equator.
But one of the (alleged) premises behind America’s presence in Iraq is that we are there to bring some accountability and integrity to the place. The notion that it’s not our money so it doesn’t matter what we do with it is just a cop-out. Having placed ourselves in control of their country, we have a responsibility to be as careful with their money as we would be with our own.
$5 billion to avoid an insurgency would have been money well spent.
Question is, how’d that work out for us?
$5 Billion is too small a number.
From the linked article in the OP:
“The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.”
“In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.”
According to Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the $8.8bn funds to Iraqi ministries were disbursed “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for”. But, according to the memorandum, “he now believes that the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20bn expended by the CPA”.
So, the cash portion was “nearly $12 Billion” (more than $5.5 Billion and less than $20 Billion). But the amount that just disappeared “extended to the entire $20 billion”.
That said, even $100 Billion to avoid the insurgency would have been a bargain. Giving $20 Billion to the wrong people probably did a lot to make it worse.
Fucking number keeps changing! Waxmann asked about 4 billion or so in cash at Bremer’s inquisition. Then the news stories broke that down into shipments that added up to 5.5 billion. I see the WaPo article mentions 12 billion, $9 billion in cash. Whatever the amount actually is, it’s a heck of a lot of money to lose track of.
Damned straight. When we were running their country (which we were, lock, stock, and barrel, during the CPA period), we had a fiduciary responsibility to handle that money in a prudent manner.
Anyone has the right to blow their own money if they so choose. But if someone (us) accepts the legal responsibility for someone else (Iraq), which we did under UN Resolution 1483, they don’t have the right to blow their money.
It would have been very unfair indeed to foist ol’ Tom on the folks of Iraq 
Gee, you’d almost think the Bush administration wants to fund the insurgency to prolong the war. If this ain’t “aid and comfort to the enemy,” what is?
Broken down over the entire population, (which as of 2006 was 26,783,383) and arbitrarily using the $9B figure, that’s $337 dollars for every man, woman and child in Iraq. $337 dollars US goes a damn site farther there than here, but it’s still not a whole lot.
All that said, how can anyone expect that Republicans, or anyone right of center for that matter could or would make an apology for this? It’s seriously, insanely criminal.
Sure, someone’s head will roll, but the milk is spilled. Time’s now to throw open the doors and let the sunlight in.
The dems don’t have the stones and all Pelosi can worry about is that her plane ain’t big enough.
That’s why people can’t get outraged. Life’s too short to outrage over something you have no power to actually change.
Fact is, neither party is any better than the other, just a different kind of corruption for a different reason.
No matter what either one does, soldiers die, our pockets get emptied, our morality and reason sink further into oblivion and our rights evaporate. Whether it’s freedom to speak, or freedom to make and keep our own money.
That whole bogus thing about the Athenian Democracy that’s been circulating, you know…
"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
- From Bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage.
Although no one’s sure of the author, it makes a bit of sense to me, and it’s also clear…
We’re at step 7.
Should this not be enough to ensure the man in charge is fired?
In any other company/organization/government the person in charge would be summarily fired. Why isn’t Bush just tossed out? Why? Or was this whole thing Bush’s idea. Wait! I can see it, there he was sitting in the Oval thinking with his advisors, “hmmm, what is a good way of pumping up the Iraqi economy? hmmm. Hey!, don’t we have a bunch of Iraqi money? yeah? … Jebus!, that much, eh? well, lets just give it back. That’ll make their economy grow, it’ll grow so good. oh yeah, this is going to be great. How are we going to give them their money back? hmmm, good question. What would be the easiest way? … no, that’d take too long. … no, that’d take way to much organizing. This needs to be fast. Lets do it like this…”
It’s called plausable deniability Spezza. I’m not being a smart ass, but it’s the same reason Bush is still walking around after Katrina. That’s something that really mattered. This $20 Billion (or whatever) is a meaningless stack of paper, and franky, if New Orleans wasn’t enough to motivate people to action over the ACTUAL horrible tragedy that took place there, what makes any thinking person believe that we’re even going to remember this in six months?
Fact is, the unemployment rate is at 1.9 percent, almost negligable. Pretty much anyone who wants a job has one. We’re all neck deep in debt that we’ll never get out of, we’re all dying of some type of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, or food related obesity.
We’re obsessing over iPods, the newest video game system, and most recently, the death of this poor young woman who’s only talent in the world was looking pretty in front of the camera (God rest her soul :rolleyes: ). So is it any wonder at all that we can’t raise anymore than our own fuss about this?
This documentary was shown on SBS TV in Australia a while ago. It pretty clearly explains where the money went and the process involved. There is a complete transcript of the show at the link.
As a non-American from a developed nation, I saw this on the news and was totally gob smacked. It was if it was a practical joke and yet not for one moment did I doubt it had happened. The things that have been going on during the Bush administration make the US a distructive joke to the rest of us in the free world and probably beyond.
When someone in another thread on the power of the religious right suggested a analogy between present day US and Roman dominated Europe being plunged into the dark ages due to the religious right - I couldn’t help but think he may have had a point.
I wonder where this money came from-
"Three U.S. Army Reserve officers were indicted Wednesday, accused of taking part in a bid-rigging scam that steered millions of dollars for Iraq reconstruction projects to a contractor in exchange for cash, luxury cars and jewelry.
An American businessman in Romania was charged as the go-between for the military officers and the contractor. The husband of one of the reservists was accused of helping smuggle tens of thousands of dollars into the United States that the couple used to pay for a deck and a hot tub at their New Jersey house.
Together, the five used the $26 billion Iraqi rebuilding fund “as their own personal ATM machines,” Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said in announcing the charges.
“These defendants actually took bricks of stolen cash … and smuggled them out of Iraq and back to the United States for their own personal use,” McNulty said."
So, since it’s a safe assumption that the Dubya Admin managed to fund the insurgency through negligence…can we call them “traitors” yet?
-Joe
That was me, she said. Yup, we gots our bread and circuses, we do, and who but a tiny cadre of whiners gives a damn what the emperor and his court are really up to?
When I heard on the radio that Anna Nichol Smith (shit, I didn’t need to look it up) had died, I knew it would lead all the evening news shows. Complete with lots of cleavage shots.
Oh, c’mon, who hasn’t lost a few billion in the sofa cushions from time to time…