Money for Nothing - US admin. in Iraq most corrupt entity in US history

[SOS]

Former CIA officer Phillip Giraldi has written a stunning article for the American Conservative magazine. While not a typical DU source for material, the information in this article is simply beyond belief.

"When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure—corruption. Large-scale and pervasive corruption meant that available resources could not be used to stabilize and secure Iraq in the early days of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), when it was still possible to do so. (snip)

Most of the money was flown into Iraq on C-130s in huge plastic shrink-wrapped pallets holding 40 “cashpaks,” each cashpak having $1.6 million in $100 bills. Twelve billion dollars moved that way between May 2003 and June 2004, drawn from accounts administered by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The $100 bills weighed an estimated 363 tons.

Money also disappeared in truckloads and by helicopter. The CPA reportedly distributed funds to contractors in bags off the back of a truck. In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him. Paul Bremer, meanwhile, had a slush fund in cash of more than $600 million in his office for which there was no paperwork. One U.S. contractor received $2 million in a duffel bag. Three-quarters of a million dollars was stolen from an office safe, and a U.S. official was given $7 million in cash in the waning days of the CPA and told to spend it “before the Iraqis take over.”"

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html

[knowbody0]

1. add that to

not metering the oil extracted by halliburton

[SOS]

3. Yes

The CPA decided not meter the oil. Billions ripped off from the people of Iraq.

[Greyhound]

2. It's all been just one big blood soaked robbery. n/t

[texpatriot2004]

30. That sums it up doesn't it. Massive bloody robbery. Mob on a

grand scale it is...the get away car, the money, the "we don't know anything" responses...un-frigging-believable. How's that for "Christian" values and "morality."

[norml]

4. Recommended.

Great stuff!

[smoogatz]

5. I wonder how much of it ended up in Swiss numbered accounts

held by Cheney, Wolfie, Condi and Rummy?

[NanceGreggs]

6. War in IRAQ ...

... the biggest money-laundering scheme ever devised.

[Athame]

7. Compare to the measley cash cards doled out to Katrina victims

absolutely sickening. :argh:

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[AwakeAtLast]

8. Kicking and putting you on the greatest page

It was my pleasure to do so. The more sludge we can bring to the top, the more the MSM will not be able to turn a blind eye. The avalanche begins with very small pieces of rolling snow.

:kick:

[stevietheman]

9. Agreed. Must Read. This will/should be devastating to the regime.

This article, along with the articles of Wilkerson and Scowcroft, almost seem like a coordinated attack from the right against Bush.

Apparently, a growing number of conservatives are seeing what the left and center now largely realize: The Bush administration is a crime syndicate, beyond any shadow of a doubt.

[glitch]

19. we've realized it since BCCI, Savings & Loan Bailout and Iran Contra

the only thing original about these crimes is the scale.

Even the complicity of the corporate media isn't new.

[lvx35]

26. Thanks for using the magic words

Crime syndicate. That's exactly what it is, no more, no less. Its not the same as fascism in italy or germany, its not a vast conspiracy driven by philosophy or ideology, its just a crime syndicate. The biggest, meanest, crime syndicate ever, but just crime syndicate.

[ComerPerro]

10. But they never quite get around to blaming Bush, do they

interesting.

[wryter2000]

11. Great article

I posted a similar thread a few days ago.

Did everyone look to the bottom and see who he works for? Canistraro Associates. Isn't Canistraro one of the good guys? A former CIA agent who's given great testimony on the war. I can't remember all the details, but I remember loving what he had to say.

[acmavm]

12. From now until the end of time the Iraqi Shock and Awe/Operation

What-the-Fuck will be known as the biggest, the most corrupt, and one of the most destructive/evil failures in the history of mankind.

[vogonity]

13. BILLION? With a "B"? I am speechless.

from the article:

"In one notorious incident in April 2004, $1.5 billion in cash that had just been delivered by three Blackhawk helicopters was handed over to a courier in Erbil, in the Kurdish region, never to be seen again. Afterwards, no one was able to recall the courier’s name or provide a good description of him."

BILLION? BILLION????????

[Peace Patriot]

14. This is what it's all about: looting.

We can talk about the PNAC agenda, and the nefarious, treasonous neocon conspiracies, but I think that was/is just window dressing to the real puppetmasters, the war profiteers.

It's small comfort, maybe, but I don't think these people have any interest in governing, or in creating anything--not even a fascist state. They are just into creating opportunities to loot--us, the Iraqis, others--wherever than can create or take advantage of chaos.

Rumsfeld said it: freedom = the freedom to loot.

-------------

However, I'm a bit worried about those who may be counting on the so-called "mainstream media" (MSM) to expose this. What I call them are the "war profiteering corporate news monopolies." They are in no way the "mainstream" of this country (58% of which opposed the Iraq war even before the invasion--Feb. '03, across the board in all polls). These news monopolies are highly controlled entities that give minority fascist views and disinformation a Big Trumpet with which to make the great progressive American majority feel like a minority, and to make individuals feel isolated and alone.

Since they are war profiteers themselves, they are not about to expose Bushite war profiteering, even corruption that is so bad it is without precedent in human history. In fact, the news monopolies are WHY it is so bad. They should have been on this long ago, when the first no-bid contract went to Halliburton which is still paying Dick Cheney something like $100,000 a year in so-called "severance" pay (and whose stock, which had been depressed during his tenure and because of his mismanagement, soon went soaring due to Bush/Cheney's war of choice.)

Like everything else--including, critically, Bushite corporation control of vote tabulation with SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code in 2004--it has to be word of mouth, the internet, and independent publications.

I would like to see these facts, in the above post, summarized in a bulleted list, and placed on billboards around the country.

Any leftist (i.e., mainstream) millionaires out there who want a project?

This is it. This, and exposing Diebold and ES&S.

[stevietheman]

32. You've hit upon the "string theory" of this administration...

it's all been about the looting, for themselves, for Bush's friends, and for favored industries, esp. in the military-industrial complex. They have looted the wealth of the Iraqi people and American taxpayers (mainly working ones, as that's how tax collection has been shifted). They have killed well over 100,000 Iraqi citizens and 2,000 of our finest in their drive to loot. They may well have "let die on purpose" people in NOLA as a prelude to a looting effort down there.

The "fascism", "moving toward theocracy" and even the "PNAC global control" models of this administration are breaking down and giving way to the "crime syndicate" model, which seems to fit perfectly across all/most actions of this regime.

Looting + killing + torture + cronyism = crime syndicate.

[BrklynLiberal]

15. This should be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

It should be the story that is being shouted on the cable news channels 24/7.
This is a disgusting, horrifying tragedy. This was a total waste of billions of US taxpayer dollars... What could have been done with money to improve the lives of thousands, if not millions of people!

I am mad as hell and am not going to take it anymore!!!

I am emailing this story to everyone I know and every media address I can get.

EDITED FOR TYPOS...of course.

[lovuian]

16. Billions and Billions!!!

Everybody stealing from Americans!!!

[oxbow]

17. this paragraph:

Some of the corruption grew out of the misguided neoconservative agenda for Iraq, which meant that a serious reconstruction effort came second to doling out the spoils to the war’s most fervent supporters. The CPA brought in scores of bright, young true believers who were nearly universally unqualified. Many were recruited through the Heritage Foundation website, where they had posted their résumés. They were paid six-figure salaries out of Iraqi funds, and most served in 90-day rotations before returning home with their war stories. One such volunteer was Simone Ledeen, daughter of leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. Unable to communicate in Arabic and with no relevant experience or appropriate educational training, she nevertheless became a senior advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad. Another was former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s older brother Michael who, though utterly unqualified, was named director of private-sector development for all of Iraq.


Bush Admin.= Cronyism = Incompetence = FUBAR Iraq

[oxbow]

18. It's all lies

stupid liberal media. They're just trying to make Bush look bad. Why do you believe anything from the "blame America first" crowd anyway?

You moran! You should be blaming the radical left for opposing the liberation, not these people who are trying to bring freedom to the middle east. It's not their fault. its hard work!

Why do you hate America?

[progressoid]

20. I'm sure this has made the front page over at Freeperland.......

NOT!

[nookiemonster]

21. Kicked and recommended.

:thumbsup:

eom

[callady]

22. Shameless in Iraq

Shameless in Iraq

Naomi Klein

Meanwhile, insurance brokers selling sudden-death policies to contractors in Iraq have doubled their premiums, with insurance costs reaching 30 percent of payroll. That means many companies are spending half their budgets arming and insuring themselves against the people they are supposedly in Iraq to help. And according to an estimate by Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on NPR's Marketplace, "At least 20 percent of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption." How much is actually left over for reconstruction? Don't do the math.

Rather than models of speed and efficiency, the contractors look more like overbilling, underperforming, lumbering beasts, barely able to move for fear of the hatred they have helped generate. The problem goes well beyond the latest reports of Halliburton drivers abandoning $85,000 trucks on the road because they don't carry spare tires. Private contractors are also accused of playing leadership roles in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A landmark class-action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights alleges that the Titan Corporation and CACI International conspired with US officials to "humiliate, torture and abuse persons" to increase demand for their "interrogation services."

<snip>

And then there's Aegis, the company being paid $293 million to save the PMO from embarrassment. It turns out that Aegis's CEO, Tim Spicer, has a bit of an embarrassing past himself. In the 1990s, he was secretly employed by the government of Papua New Guinea to put down rebels and hatched a plan to break an arms embargo in Sierra Leone.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040712/klein


http://www.waronwant.org/

[Gronk Groks]

23. Corruption. Large-scale and pervasive...

...everyting this mis-administration has done has been corrupt. Greed has never had such friends as shrub and his cronies. It makes African despots and South American narco-terrorists look like amateurs.

If the Democrats can't look like the party of fiscal responsibility after this, they are hopeless...

[minkyboodle]

24. when I start forwarding articles from "The American Conservative"

you know things are fucked up and down in ways I can't even comprehend.... great article BTW reads as if Al Franken wrote it.
Scott

[Iowa]

40. Yep, and you've hit on what concerns me...

The right will try to take credit for opposing these crimes and thereby hold on to power. Meanwhile most Dems are hiding in their holes until it's 100% safe to take a real stand. Example: my completely worthless DLC governor Vilsak is touring the country soliciting "ideas" from business executives in preparation for a 2008 run. "While Rome burns..."

[pinniped]

25. No surprise here since this was 1/2 of the reason for the war.

The other 1/2 was relieving the nice Iraqis of their vast supplies of black gold.

The only unknown was the amount pilfered.

[Ksec]

27. Hell, the cons cant deny reality any longer

They wanna put this war on those dreaded neocons. Earth to Cons- you were pushing this war just as hard as those neocons you claim started all the problems.

I think we should hold conservatives responsible, not neocons, not ultra cons. Conservatives. When you split them up you give them a way to wiggle out of what they did. Fk that. THEY did it. The entire republican party and their conservatives. One pushed as hard as the other.

Dont give them an out people

[sandnsea]

28. No military spending oversight either

This story just came out. The American Conservative will probably catch up to it in 2007 or so. "The DoD Inspector General doesn’t have anybody in Iraq auditing the spending. Nope, pulled them out a year ago. But, that also means there isn’t anybody in Iraq who can make a spending report public either. Hold on to your hat now, cuz it gets even better… there IS one person from the DoD IG office in Iraq, they’re there to “develop an anti-corruption process for the Iraqi government.”

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/?view=plink&id=1418

[cosmicdot]

29. how 'bout giving each 'murican $1M ...

while the getting is good ... consider it an once-in-million tax-free Operation Leg-up ... a Marshall Plan for America ... let everyone catch-up, pay-off, get some dental work done, take a vacation, get a little rest, enjoy life a little ... probably make us feel more secure, too ....

we're not even getting a chicken in every pot ...

I'm sure the serial numbers on the money 'found' in Iraq wasn't accounted ... Where did it go?

the gold bars found ... who were the 'experts' that said it was only copper and zinc?

and, the priceless antiquities from the Iraq National Museum? has everything been found?


Not to mention the $2.3 trillion missing at the Penatagon.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

[newspeak]

31. yeah, most corrupt

in the history of the US !!!!!! sometimes I wished I was not living in interesting times!!!! it's hard to watch sociopathic murdering theives destroy our country as well as others.

[fearnobush]

33. I bet the Money was used for Bush Chaney 04. No way could they

plaster there bushit signs and billboards all over every inch of the country with what was donated.

[Nothing Without Hope]

34. How much was set aside for their secret war in Syria and maybe Iran?

And then there's the un-metered Halliburton oil...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2173166

[Blue_Tires]

35. kicked/recommended

JFC...even the American Conservative gets it.....

[louis c]

38. me too

[vanboggie]

36. Talk about Shock N Awe

You would think that by now we wouldn't be shocked by anything the cabal does. Yet the depravity continues to amaze...

[Lasher]

37. Is this more corrupt than bankrupting our treasury...

with enormous giveaways to the wealthy and their corporations, then cutting Medicaid and other services because we can't afford it?

[SammyWinstonJack]

39. They go hand in hand. nt

[Why Syzygy]

41. FUCK!

goddamn drug dealers! Once a drug dealer always a drug dealer!
MOFOS! This really pisses me off. They give legitimate drug suppliers a bad name. They just siphon. Did I mention I'm PISSED OFF?

[undeterred]

42. And this from people who are supposed to be

the fiscally responsible party. They hate giving money to people who need it desperately because they can't find a job or have no health insurance, but they are happy to throw it away with both hands for the hope of a little more power.

[SOS]

43. I've been looking

for the media blaster via google and at DU. Anyone have a link for that?
I'd like to forward this article to all the media. Already sent to Olberman, but would like to hit em all.

[HamdenRice]

44. Can someone please explain how this is not as bad as "travelgate"?

I really feel as though we have fallen through the looking glass. How could the press obsess for years over whether Hillary Clinton helped fire people the WH was perfectly entitled to fire, but documented stories of cronies walking off with billions in cash is not a story?

[LSK]

45. so are the Conservatives finally waking up to the NIGHTMARE they created?

Lets just keep banging the message to everyone that this is all the REPUBLICANS DOING!