Back in the dark ages of TV, the 50’s or 60’s, there was a popular quiz show on the tube, the “$64,000 Question”…and there was always a bit of a mystery on how the people were so smart (there was NO Google)….and there was a movie about a rigged game show, where the contestant had the answers before hand…..anyway, I digress….
Let us move on, shall we?
When the last statue of Saddam was pulled down and the peasants danced, it seems that the Bush admin sent a bunch of cash, ands I do mean cash, into Iraq to help with the recovery that was to follow……this from an article in the LA Times…..
Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.
This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.
For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be “the largest theft of funds in national history.”
The question is…..where is the cash…all $6.6 billion?
That is right, Irene……$6.6 billion just up and walked off…….this happened when Crocker was the administrator of Iraq in the interim period before elections for a new government….Crocker? Yep, the same guy that has been named the ambassador to Afghanistan….yet another country that we are pouring money into by the plane loads……will we see another disappearing act by our cash in that country also?
Someone turned a profit off all that cash….any ideas?
This is how Washington protects the taxpayers contributions to the running of the nation? We are SO screwed!
A very good post and it represents, in my opinion, the tip of a very large iceberg that few want to investigate or do anything to change in the future – mainly because it means getting our coats off and doing some actual f*cking WORK!
As has been seen in the UK (under Gordon Bloody Brown) simply throwing money at most things solves nothing at all and, in spite of what the wealthy would have you believe, neither everyone, or everything has its price.
I am a believer in aid supplied by rich nations for poor ones and certainly, when national disasters occur (be they natural or man made) it should be “all hands to the pump” to stop the metaphorical ship from going under.
But just dumping money on foreign soil, whether it is literally that (as in this case), or giving either corrupt or weak and ineffectual governments loads of dosh is just a waste of OUR money and does very little if anything at all to help the people. In fact, aid is usually used as a political/clandestine weapon and there’s little or nothing altruaistic about its giving.
Provide tons of aid food and loads of cash to a poor country and you boost a load of crooks (half of them politicians) and maybe help a few peasants get by for now and everything costs twice to ten times as much as it should because of the amount of the assistance that never gets past the crooks and cheats. HOWEVER, take some food aid DIRECT to a village for NOW, drill them a well or two and give them shovels, seed and some ploughing equipment and you could well have changed the lives of a whole community for a complete generation. ALSO help them build a school and fund ONE staff member and you are likely to have changed the whole community’s lives FOREVER!
Now THAT makes sense to me, but it’s a lot easier for politicians to just sign a cheque for a few billion dollars of someone else’s money, isn’t it? And, of course, that way there’s always likely to be the opportunity to grab a share for themselves too… 👿
I agree….the investigation says it was stolen but does not track down who…….How rich is Crocker? Did Blackwater handle the security? Who had the most access? Stuff like that…..6 billion would do a lot of good here so they need to find someone to blame….my vote is Blackwater…I want that group null and voided!
I understand, but that isn’t very likely to happen, is it? They’ve got bigger and better guns than the government, haven’t they? 😈
Sorry to say that it is correct……which brings me to a post I am working on about austerity…..and the state selling off stuff….
Oh, us Brits are familiar with that one. I don’t think the state as such should own stuff it doesn’t need, but (for instance and there are many others), during the boom years about a decade ago (was it only that long ago?), Gordon Brown financed a lot of his more dogmatic, stupid and totally pointless enterprises by selling off Britain’s huge gold reserves – AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE MARKET FOR GOLD! Now THAT’S what I call intelligent – NOT!
Selling assets to prop up the economy following wholly avoidable failures is simply a way of hiding the government’s own incompetence. Getting rid of national assets in such reprehensible circumstances for such pathetic reasons is ALWAYS bad – so godawfully wasteful in fact that it’s almost criminal!
I have a cvouple of posts about austerity….one is today ……maybe it goes along with what we are talking about…..
We have talked about Glass-Steagall before and thought you might like this…..
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/uk-preparing-return-glass-steagall
The principles embodied in “Glass-Steagal” (as far as I can tell) amount to the way the UK has regarded banking for decades – maybe centuries.
Osborne – in fact the whole Tory/LibDem coalition and most of those two parties – has stated that we need to do what it takes to prevent a repeat of the failed current policies. UK banks have been stupid in the extreme (as I imagine US banks have too). Instead of swallowing a little humble pie and keeping a low profile, they have fuelled anger against them by consistently paying huge “bonuses” to staff (at least partly out of taxpayers’ funding) as a “reward” for all their f*ck-ups!
The government knows full well that it is as clear as day that the people WILL NOT put up with the behaviour of these rogues. In truth, we only ever went away from strong banking principles in order to compete with the “do what the f*ck you like” terms of American banking created during the Clinto era and that has so clearly failed so abysmally.
I noted that the article wondered that the Banking Cartel had “allowed” Britain to get this far. Well, I have news for the so-called bankers involved – it’s OUR turn now. WE will do what WE like and f*ck YOU!
There are a couple of reasons why austerity is VITAL and I’m sure I’ll tell you what THEY are in answer to your posts… 😆
Glass-Steagall kept the bankers in line…..it did its job well….that is why Clinton and his banker friends had to reverse all that….I wish the UK well…hopefully they will not have the influence they have here (bankers that is)…….