So awesome on so many levels:
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.
Sounds like approximately three of those twenty-one planes never made it to Iraq. Or, maybe they did. No one is sure what happened except whomever made off with the cash.
The best part? It wasn’t even our money and we may have to pay it back.
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.
It’s fair to say that Congress, which has already shelled out $61 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for similar reconstruction and development projects in Iraq, is none too thrilled either.
“Congress is not looking forward to having to spend billions of our money to make up for billions of their money that we can’t account for, and can’t seem to find,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), who presided over hearings on waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq six years ago when he headed the House Government Reform Committee.
In a just world we’d put Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld in prison for this alone. At a minimum, their assets should be seized and they should be thoroughly pauperized.
Wasn’t Bremmer there during that time? Put them all in prison and set the fines to impoverish them.
Bremer is probably lighting his cigars with those benjamins as we speak…with his hiking boots propped up high on his desk.
Money can be recovered. Those million or so stolen Iraqi lives cannot be. That’s why they need to be in The Hague. In a truly just world, the stolen money is an afterthought.
not to disagree on your priorities, but how exactly can the money be recovered?
6.6 billion? So that would be about one dollar stolen for every human being on planet Earth. Delightful.