Literally tons of money sent to Baghdad

[leftchick]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5469436.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It weighed 28 tons and took up as much room as 74 washing machines. It was $2.4 billion in $100 bills, and Baghdad needed it as soon as possible.

The initial request from U.S. officials in charge of Iraq required the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to decide whether it could open its vault on a Sunday.

Then, when the shipment date changed, officials had to scramble to line up U.S. Air Force C-130 cargo planes to hold the money. They did, and the $2,401,600,000 was safely delivered to Baghdad on June 22, 2004. It was the largest one-time cash transfer in the history of the New York Fed.

~snip~

Both Republicans and Democrats appeared taken aback by the sheer volume of cash sent to Iraq: nearly $12 billion over the course of the U.S. occupation from March 2003 until June 2004, according to a report by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who had reviewed e-mails and documents subpoenaed from the bank.

[whistle]

1. How many trees are involved in the making of that much money

[formercia]

16. none

currency is made with cotton fibers.

[merwin]

51. Cotton grows on trees too!!!

:-)

[formercia]

59. ok, very short trees

LOL

[C_U_L8R]

2. And would someone be so kind

to tell us where our money went ????

George? Dick?

[Blue_Tires]

58. blackwater usa

and the other mercs

[Oversea Visitor]

3. Jesus

All cash, and no records man, knock knock anyone home in the Senate hello hello you guys still asleep. $12 million hard cool cash all people moneys the people you suppose to represent. And it is now June 2005.

[truthisfreedom]

5. 12 billion you mean.

[Oversea Visitor]

25. Yike not my fault

Bad l caught Chimp diesea Misplaced a few zeros Oh well who would notice. Go back to sleep please.

[leftchick]

6. I would say to check Paul Bremer's pockets..

but he got a medal of freedom instead of being indicted...

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. Why is Bremmer wearing army boots with his fancy suit?

It's not like he's risking his life anymore hanging around the Green Zone.

[htuttle]

17. He went mad over there

He thinks the boots are 'magic' and protect him from the giant hedgehogs that want to kill him.

Quite a sad case, really.

[daleo]

57. Flashback to Spiny Norman (Monty Python)

Interviewer:Was there anything unusual about him?

Gloria: him. I should say not. Except, that Dinsdale was convinced that he was being watched by a giant hedgehog whom he referred to as 'Spiny Norman'.

Interviewer: How big was Norman supposed to be?

Gloria:Normally Spiny Norman was wont to be about twelve feet from snout to tail, but when Dinsdale was depressed Norman could be anything up to eight hundred yards long. When Norman was about Dinsdale would go very quiet and start wobbling and his nose would swell up and his teeth would move about and he'd get very violent and claim that he'd laid Stanley Baldwin."

[htuttle]

61. Bremer!

Bremer....

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

19. those aren't boots... that is a really bad case of

toenail fungus?

[saigon68]

44. Nice boots--- motherfucker

[leftchick]

46. lol!

I knew this was you when I read just the headline in my posts!

hiya saigon

:)

[saigon68]

60. Hiya LC

:)

[liberal N proud]

4. And for what purpose are we sending our cash reserves to

Baghdad?

Sounds like an offshore money laundering scheme of immense proportions.

[K-W]

9. It is Iraq's cash, not ours.

Or at least it was before we handed it out to contractors.

[oblivious]

15. Yes, let's make this clear. It was Iraq's money.

The cash -- generated mostly from oil revenues -- represented Iraqi funds that had been held in trust by the Federal Reserve under the terms of a U.N. resolution.

"held in trust" - how ironic!

[ET Awful]

20. That would be the same money held in trust that was supposed to have

been paid to US soldiers held as POW's during the first gulf war who filed and won a lawsuit against the Hussein regime right? The same funds that the Bush administration refused to pay out from said trust?

[oblivious]

30. I think it was considerably more than that.

$8.1 billion in the oil-for-food account
$2.5 billion in Saddam's frozen assets
$1.3 billion in cash Saddam left in Iraq.

Total 11.9 billion held in trust in the Fed Res Bank in NY.

[ET Awful]

32. Yes, it was more, but there are millions of that money which has vanished

that were awarded by a court to US soldiers held as POW's during Gulf War 1. Our "President" in his unending "support" of our troops refused to allow the funds to be paid and instead allowed the money to be spirited out of the country.

The point being that once again, there is proof of a willful screwing over of the troops this administration claims to support.

[oblivious]

39. That reminds me of this article by Naomi Klein. US corps are getting paid

Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us?

Saturday October 16, 2004

...Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1328887,00.html
Edit: spelling

[DoYouEverWonder]

22. The Cayman Islands were going to sink otherwise

They have to have some where to stash all that loot for the end times.

[Oversea Visitor]

7. I sincerely

hope US is just printing money and sending it to Iraq. Cause this going to blow back in face of US so bad. You country reputation is at rock bottom. If you currency reputation goes downhill US be so very very screwed.
Man am I witnessing the biggest train wreck in man history happening?

[Karenina]

23. Yes.

n/t

[tavalon]

33. Yes, in fact, you are

When China calls in its chits, we are done, finished, over.

It appears that the only thing that keeps China from doing that is the worldwide repercussions, including to China itself.

[Kolesar]

8. Borrowed from China... eom

[magellan]

10. Welcome to the wonderful world of privitization

Where all that's required to explain where $8.8 BILLION went is this:

"There were observable results of what that money was spent on," said Joseph Benkert, deputy director for the Pentagon's Iraq reconstruction office. "Salaries for hundreds of thousands of government employees were paid. ...Government ministries operated. We know that they operated. Various projects were done on behalf of those ministers, and we know what those projects are."

[K-W]

13. Well US officials are always so honest, im sure we can trust them.

I mean who would ask God's chosen army to account for money.

[acmavm]

31. Rummy, is that you? "...and we know what those projects are"...

Isn't that pretty much what we were told about those mythological WMDs? They're east, and north, and south of somewhere.

[tavalon]

34. Salaries paid with cash?

I call bullshit, Joseph Benkert.

[JawJaw]

11. I hope

they got a receipt..

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. I would assume they asked for the money

to be in all unmarked bills?

Sounds like extortion to me.

[warrior1]

18. You mean

our taxes. I'll bet anything the pile is bigger than that.

[bleedingheart]

21. It is 2005 and they don't have electronic transfer?

Oh I am so sorry.... this looks like some huge payout....

Hell...if I went to the bank today they would prefer giving me a check for all my assets than giving me a huge wad of cash...


This just looks so evil, so wrong...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

24. Ah, that's because you are a person

not an entity or a country.

[bleedingheart]

26. I thought those Swiss bank accounts and stuff were to transfer money

...why not transfer the funds to some intermediate ???

Still seems just so weird..

[jokerman93]

48. self deleted

[jokerman93]

49. A small correction

"You" may have once been, but are no longer considered a person. Corporations are persons. You are a "consumer". A consumer is a human resource - a passive receptacle for corporate products and agendas, and the primary source of return on invested wealth by the owners of our new society - the senior corporate officers and stockholders.

So...what are your questions at this point?

[CJCRANE]

29. And it seems like it was urgent

as they tried to get it done on a Sunday. Must be nice to be able to have that conversation, can you imagine...

"I want two billion dollars, in cash, NOW!"

[ET Awful]

41. Well, the electronic transfer machine was made by Deibold and it

would have just transferred the money to Bush, it would've been too obvious :).

[tea4me]

27. All the perfume in France,

and cargo planes carrying cash....can not wash the blood from George Bush's hands.:+

[tanyev]

28. I have to wonder if some of that cash is what is funding

the insurgency.

[tavalon]

35. Oh, now that's a subversive thought

and very likely true. Interesting.

[tanyev]

36. I'm not saying any of our people knowingly gave them money,

but with so much cash being handed out freely without any oversight, some of it was bound to end up in the wrong hands.

[tavalon]

37. But, you opened a line of thought in my mind of a much darker ilk.

Use the War on Drugs as a template. We play (and pay) both sides to keep that war going, why wouldn't we do the exact same thing over there?

[leftchick]

40. bank on it...

so to speak. The spooks in Iraq are no different than the ones in Vietnam and they still require C A S H.

[Judi Lynn]

50. Good one.If there's no fighting,we'd have to withdraw, & leave the oil

where it could accidently benefit the people of Iraq! Wouldn't that be so sad for the _Bush base, the "haves and the haves more?"

[Tracer]

38. Dollars?

Didn't we go to a tremendous amount of trouble to replace all the Iraqi currency Ñ just to get rid of the pic of Saddam?

[Javaman]

42. Note from Baghdad: need money, low on beer.

[bemildred]

43. U.S. was big spender in days before Iraq handover

Gives new meaning to the term "bag man." This has to be the biggest bag operation ever.

The United States handed out nearly $20 billion of Iraq's funds, with a rush to spend billions in the final days before transferring power to the Iraqis nearly a year ago, a report said on Tuesday.

A report by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California, said in the week before the hand-over on June 28, 2004, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority ordered the urgent delivery of more than $4 billion in Iraqi funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York.

One single shipment amounted to $2.4 billion -- the largest movement of cash in the bank's history, said Waxman.

---

Cash was loaded onto giant pallets for shipment by plane to Iraq, and paid out to contractors who carried it away in duffel bags.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050621/ts_nm/iraq_cash_dc_1&printer=1%3B_ylt=ArKsaf8mNdfILXeuYLslaMxg.3QA%3B_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

[catzies]

45. "Send lawyers, guns & money," or...2 out of 3 ain't bad?

:wtf:

[natrat]

47. FEDERAL RESERVE BANK->BAGHDAD-> CAYMAN ISLANDS

[Cronus Protagonist]

53. No doubt about it

In fact, it's probably a big part of what the war's about.

http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!

[DS1]

52. One of those dollars is mine, and I want it back

Serial Number E84510210B

I'm waiting.

[Parche]

54. cash to Iraq

And they are closing schools here in Portland Oregon...............

[Barkley]

55. Too bad it wasn't euros

The cash -- generated mostly from oil revenues -- represented Iraqi funds that had been held in trust by the Federal Reserve under the terms of a U.N. resolution.

[daleo]

56. Imagine how much of that went missing to Chalabi et al

"It's only a few kilograms of 20's, nobody ever weighs it that carefully anyway."

Not just Chalabi and friends, plenty for the Bushco too.

[sintax]

62. kick n/t

[rocktivity]

63. How Sopranos!

Liberating a country is an all-cash business? And funny the article should mention washing machines--it sounds like there was some sho' nuff money-"laundering" going on!

:headbang:
rocknation