Will Perps Behind $8.8 Billion Iraq Money Theft Be Punished? Probably Not, As Many Of Them Likely Were Bremer’s CPA Babies
Posted by Phoenix Woman on June 13, 2011
I see the Pentagon’s finally admitting what we knew to be true ages ago:
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.
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 mystery is a growing embarrassment to the Pentagon, and an irritant to Washington’s relations with Baghdad. Iraqi officials are threatening to go to court to reclaim the money,
which came from Iraqi oil sales, seized Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the United Nations’ oil-for-food program.
I wonder how much went for black ops, how much went for bribes, and how much simply went into the back pockets of the young College Republican and AEI sheltered-workshop kiddie types Paul Bremer picked to run the Coalition Provisional Authority?
This entry was posted on June 13, 2011 at 9:46 am and is filed under Iraq war, Oil, our tax dollars at work. Tagged: Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, ripoff, theft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
3 Responses to “Will Perps Behind $8.8 Billion Iraq Money Theft Be Punished? Probably Not, As Many Of Them Likely Were Bremer’s CPA Babies”
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Charles II said
Ah, but there’s more to the story: From DemocracyNow:
So, we’ll get to pay another $6.6B for the Bush Administration’s blunders.
Phoenix Woman said
Yup, but at least we might have a chance of punishing the malefactors. (Especially now that Dana Rohrabacher done screwed the pooch with regard to US-Iraqi relations pretty much beyond repair.)
http://renaissancepost.com/politics/dana-rohrabacher-the-terrorists-best-friend/
Charles II said
The Republican-Terrorist connection deserves to be investigated.