The U.S. Federal Reserve send 363 tons of currency (bills, not coins), totalling $5.5 billion into Baghdad according to an AP story.
“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that’s exactly what our government did,” [Rep. Henry Waxman] said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.
The story goes on to note that $8.8 billion out of $12 billion disbursed by Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority was unaccounted for.
Indiana Representative Dan Burton, apparently able to drag himself out of the 19th Hole, bothered to show up to comment, “We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn’t, in my opinion, constructive[.]”
All that sun on the golf course must be baking Rep. Burton’s brains. Otherwise, he would surely realize that, if we weren’t pumping billions of dollars into an Iraqi black hole, we might not have to borrow so much money from our grandchildren to try to fight the terrorists, some of whom have probably now made their way to Iraq now that it’s been destabilized. (Nevermind the very real possibility that those recent Iraqi immigrant/terrorists could be funding themselves with the dollars that are unaccounted for.)
Absolutely shameful.
Mike Sylvester
No records, no receipts, no shame. Randi Rhodes featured this tale today. . .
When I think of the good this money could have contibuted to for legal citizens of our country it’s sickening.I knew this would happen and told several people I might as well take all the money they keep sending over there and burn it in my fireplace.Funding the troops is one thing but the money we have sent this country is a total waste.Why build buildings that the insurgents blow up a day or week later.
Now I do not care for Waxman but this Burton character is a real genius isn’t he.
This was IRAQI money and was not available for projects in the US. The CPA was essentially the trustee for the Iraqis until their govt was up and running.
Also to be fair, there was no alternative but to use cash. The Iraqis had no banking system, no computers, no telephone, no internet and no electronic transfer capability. It was a pure cash society.
Another misunderstanding. The Special General in Iraq did perform an audit and found that the money did get from the CPA to the Iraqi ministers. However, the CPA required and received no information (beyond general statements like “payroll”) on how these minitstries spent the money. This was obviously a huge error.
Mr Bremer claimed that there were not enough people to do the job and that the post-invasion planning was completely inadequate. His argument was essentially that he did the best he could under the circumstances and that the administration is to blame.
There were definitely major errors made by the CPA – debathification being one of the worst. But I don’t think it’s legitimate to blame them for using cash.
One problem with understaffing was they couldn’t find enough Republican Pro-Lifers with the balls to go over there. And for the ones that did go, SURPRISE! having a party affiliation and abortion stance doesn’t make up for a lack of skills in arabic, or knowledge of the area, or lack of engineering skills, etc. The lack of planning and execution was one thing. But the cronyism and litmus tests that were used for our mid-level staffers over there (and the litmus tests that weren’t used–like knowledge or capability) were simply criminal. When you think about the lives and money lost over this Rovian bullshit, it becomes clear that some people should be tried, tied to posts (if found guilty of course, but maybe we could just have “tribunals” for them), and shot over this stuff.
Good point on the litmus tests. The hearing did not discuss that issue in any real detail. However, Mr Bremer provided the names (and resumes I believe) of the top 100 people in his organization. Of course this doesn’t account for the “mid-level staffers” as you suggest.
My guess is there’s a whole other hearing wrapped up in this idea of cronyism…