Donald Trump Suggests U.S. Soldiers Embezzled Money in Iraq

[steve2470]

Source: TIME

Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested soldiers who embezzled funds from Iraqi reconstruction efforts were “living very well.”

“Iraq. Crooked as hell,” Trump said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. “How about bringing baskets of money, millions and millions of dollars, and handing it out?” he asked. “I want to know who are the soldiers that had that job because I think they’re living very well right now, whoever they may be.”

Trump’s spokesperson insists he wasn’t referring to American military personnel. “Mr. Trump was referring to Iraqi soldiers,” Hope Hicks said to NBC News Tuesday evening…



Read more: http://time.com/4369774/donald-trump-iraq-war/?xid=gonewsedit&google_editors_picks=true

[steve2470]

1. Trump Camp: Iraq Theft Claims Weren't About U.S. Troops

http://www.nbcnews.com/card/trump-camp-iraq-theft-claims-werent-about-u-s-troops-n592671?cid=par-time-article_20141002

Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested soldiers who embezzled funds from Iraqi reconstruction efforts were "living very well."

"Iraq. Crooked as hell," Trump said at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. "How about bringing baskets of money, millions and millions of dollars, and handing it out?" he asked. "I want to know who are the soldiers that had that job because I think they're living very well right now, whoever they may be."

Trump's spokesperson insists he wasn't referring to American military personnel. "Mr. Trump was referring to Iraqi soldiers," Hope Hicks said to NBC News Tuesday evening.

The Trump campaign could offer no backup for its claim. The fund for distributing cash during the reconstruction was controlled by the U.S.-led coalition.

[emulatorloo]

2. More bullshit from Deadbeat Donald

We know what he said and it wasn't about Iraqi Soldiers.

[Roy Rolling]

3. Right....

The Iraqi Army was "bringing baskets of money...". BRINGING. What Iraqi Army division was BRINGING in millions of dollars into their own country?

[SummerSnow]

23. The ramblings of a fool ...a sonnet about Donald Trump

[fbc]

4. Where's the money?

If Trump's ravings lead to an investigation of where all the billions in cash disappeared to, it would be a good thing.

[seabeckind]

8. I remember stories about pallets of money.

I thought we'd see some investigations but ....

Good thing we had Gates on the job to look into it.

[cpwm17]

15. Yes, there were pallets of money sent to Iraq.

I happened to marshal in plane-load of cash when I was deployed with the Air Force to Baghdad International Airport. The people that entered the plane said it smelled like cash, and some of them posed with the cash bundles.

[seabeckind]

16. Here's an old article about it.

How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish

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.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

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.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

[cpwm17]

19. That's the time frame I was there.

I saw the delivery in May 2004. The story we were given was the it was Saddam's money.

[LuckyLib]

20. Who in their right mind? Chimpy McFlightsuit and his gang of warmongers, not

in their right minds.

[karynnj]

21. Bremer and others in the coalition may have thought they were simply following the culture

when they gave money as baksheesh to local tribal leaders to get them to appear to come to our side. It also seems that they did not even keep records that detailed where the money went.

But, this was yet another Bush scandal.

[C_U_L8R]

5. commander in cheap

Trump is such a loser, he blames our troops without a shred of evidence. His mind is clearly rotted by right wing conspiracy radio.

[seabeckind]

24. Here's a little light evidence for you.

The Fraud of War

U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have stolen tens of millions through bribery, theft, and rigged contracts.

U.S. Army Specialist Stephanie Charboneau sat at the center of a complex trucking network in Forward Operating Base Fenty near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that distributed daily tens of thousands of gallons of what troops called “liquid gold”: the refined petroleum that fueled the international coalition’s vehicles, planes, and generators.

...

She began an affair with a civilian, Jonathan Hightower, who worked for a Pentagon contractor that distributed fuel from Fenty, and one day in March 2010 he told her about “this thing going on” at other U.S. military bases around Afghanistan, she recalled in a recent telephone interview.

Troops were selling the U.S. military’s fuel to Afghan locals on the side, and pocketing the proceeds. When Hightower suggested they start doing the same, Charboneau said, she agreed.

In so doing, Charboneau contributed to thefts by U.S. military personnel of at least $15 million worth of fuel since the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And eventually she became one of at least 115 enlisted personnel and military officers convicted since 2005 of committing theft, bribery, and contract-rigging crimes valued at $52 million during their deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a comprehensive tally of court records by the Center for Public Integrity.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/05/u_s_troops_have_stolen_tens_of_millions_in_iraq_and_afghanistan_center_for.html

(bolding mine)

[KamaAina]

6. *soldiers* who embezzled funds from Iraqi reconstruction efforts?

Since when are Halliburton employees "soldiers"?!

[IllinoisBirdWatcher]

7. Shameful.

Retired Major General Paul Eaton, a former commander in Iraq, said the following:

"Trump's attack against the courageous American men and women who heroically worked to restore law and order in Iraq is at once uninformed and irresponsible, and is testimony to why Mr. Trump is unqualified to serve as Commander in Chief of the finest troops on the planet.

"From saying he doesn't like POWs because they were captured, to trying to get disabled veterans kicked out from in front of Trump Tower, to belittling service by calling his sexual exploits in the 80s his "personal Vietnam," it is clear Trump has no respect for military service, or the people who serve.

"For him to smear our troops and veterans as he has, it is disqualifying, as far as I am concerned."

http://www.votevets.org/press/trump-accuses-u-s-troops-of-stealing-and-living-well-off-of-iraq-funds

[DoBotherMe]

9. Trump is saying what conservatives think

rank and file military are just tools for them, not warriors or brave or even appreciated. Just a means to an end.

[Person 2713]

25. That's right no concern except as a means to an end. These types don't care about anything or onenot

in their isolated world. Soldiers are distained along with the rest of the masses

[Hawkmoon369]

10. NO, not Soldiers but Rumsfeld and Cheney

Those are the criminals!

[seabeckind]

11. They didn't unload the planes.

Bremer helped.

And somebody helped Bremer.

I think when you turn over that rock you'll find a bunch of cockroaches. And I'll bet there are some who are still doing the same thing in a different theater.

[tanyev]

12. It was Coalition Provisional Authority who was handing out bags of money with no accountability.

You want to point fingers, Donald, you point them at Wolfowitz, Bremer, and Dan Senor.

[Blue_Tires]

13. Trump is just trolling now...

He must be making bets with his campaign manager on the most outrageous and offensive thing he could say and still have people love him...

[TygrBright]

14. Hey, I believe him!

On the topics of embezzlement, chicanery, running cons, and sleazy financial dealings, this man is an EXPERT who knows whereof he speaks.

Break out the torches and pitchforks, we're heading to the VA home.....

wearily,
Bright

[matt819]

17. If anyone knows about dipping his hands into baskets of money

it's Donald Trump.

Sure there was probably corruption. But, as in the case of Trump himself, it occurred at the top of the food chain.

[truthisfreedom]

18. So he's attacking the bush administration again?

Just how is that relevant to his lame campaign?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. Probably tRumps 0.01% class got tons more of it than the warrior class he is attacking. . . nt

[seabeckind]

26. Trump's campaign is an attack on the establishment.

Why is that so hard to fathom?

The wars were a total fiasco, mismanaged, etc. And that didn't end when Bush left office.

Trump will be ripping the scabs off of any f' up by any admin going back to the Carter years.

That puts "our" candidate in a very uncomfortable position. She either defends the f' ups or she does a me, too to Trump's criticisms.

And it gets even more uncomfortable when establishment mistakes land on her doorstep.

[Calista241]

27. Wasn't Clooney in a movie about this? n/t

[olddad56]

28. if he were President then, he would have been stealing the money himself.