"Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?"

"Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?"

i love that quote from this news article about how most of the $9bn ( that's NINE BILLION DOLLARS for the hard of understanding ) that was sent in pallets to iraq has vanished with no way of knowing where it went to nor even a system to monitor how it was supposed to have been spent.

so, when the next budget for the iraq war is approved, consider whether the above will happen again

This is why I have to laugh at all these people who not only support this war, they support this president and some have even elevated him to hero status. This money, explosives, all these contracts to the DOD, the billions already spent on the war already, the millions given to these scoundrels like Chalabi, and all these poor kids, the fathers and mothers,sisters and brothers that have perished in this war on all sides. You almost have to feel sorry for these poor delusional people that have so much faith in this man and his administration that has made so many callous mistakes and miscalculations this entire time over and over again, yet they can still see him as a hero. We need to give them some sort of tax break on a shrink or perhaps some sort of discount on a padded cell if we have anything left in the treasury after all is said and done.

Is it a wonder Bush bought land down in Uruguay? Hes gettin the hell outta Dodge when his term is over.

According to ABC news this morning it is more like 12 billion, a full 30% more than the first report of 9 billion.
I wonder what the actual number is?

The funny thing about the story this morning was that the sound cut out when I was watching it.
All morning the news broadcast was fine, but when the one story I was waiting for came up, the audio cut out. Now the audio is fine and there havent been any more problems. What are the odds?

"Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?"

duh

answer - usa



well we don't need to say anything more. america is so full of money and the federal reserve should have been paid of a long time ago. i bet the geezer who said this, was just pissed he did not get his back hander.

[edit on 2/7/2007 by andy1033]

doesnt that much cash being taken out of a country damage the economy & currency?

Then again, this suicide bomber could be sent by the same people that want to "Liberate" Iraq, by creating Order out of Chaos - Double Agents working for MI6, CIA, NSA. Same thing happened in Northern Ireland few years ago, and in former Yugoslavia, where western intelligence agencies sponsored terrorist cells to perform such actions in order to further divide the local population.

Originally posted by Frakkerface
doesnt that much cash being taken out of a country damage the economy & currency?

Of course. But it damages OUR economy. Not Bush & Co's. They have their very own members-only economy detached from ours.

This whole debacle amazes me but doesn't surprise me. We're witnessing political arrogance and corruption on an unprecedented scale. If we're learning about colossal cluster-f's like this can you even imagine the ones we're NOT hearing about?

I have a question for the group: what DOES it take to be impeached/jailed in this country these days? I mean, if everything we've seen over the last several years is just ho-hum-business-as-usual does someone have to bugger an infant on live TV to convince people it's time to pull the plug on them? Holy crap.

That is nothing compared to how much the pentagon lost last year which was around $100 billion outright, someone on ATS posted the article where the pentagon admitted to this. So we have in fact about a 130+ billion USD just "dissapearing" each year, not to mention money spent on bogus programs or programs that have never existed.

Apparently without even having to look into this closely, it is obvious that this was money that belonged to the Iraqis. Not a single poster on here seemed to grasp that concept. We turned the country back over to them, so we returned their funds that we had frozen, or held back from them due to oil revenues during the time we were administering the country. If we did not, and held the funds waiting for a stable infrastructure to develop which could adequately handle the banking transactions to do this the 'right' way, can you imagine the outrage then... I can.

TheMesh

Originally posted by TheMesh
Apparently without even having to look into this closely, it is obvious that this was money that belonged to the Iraqis.

Ok so whose going to replace it? If it was in our care then don't you think we will be held responsible since we were responsible for dispersal of these funds? Or do you think the Iraqi's will just say "Oh well thanks for freezing our funds and holding it for us anyway we appreciate the effort".

This is why I support the democrats for continuing the debate on the president's decision to increase funding to Iraq. I personally support sending more funds so that our soldiers can be adequately equipped to have a victory in Iraq(of course this is not what this adminstration wants) and have another day to be alive before they return. However, I want every single dollar to be accounted for by some kind of independent accountant because I guarantee another "9 billion" will go missing.

There is another take on this story here:

www.guardian.co.uk...

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

Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone

David Pallister
Thursday February 8, 2007
The Guardian

...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.

"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

"They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75m in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds."

The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500m in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'."

The memorandum concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste ... thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving pay cheques from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States."

Funds lost to corruption and waste, lost to Saddam's coffers- really, what's the difference. About 500,000 lives, that's what. :shk:

Originally posted by Revelmonk
This is why I support the democrats for continuing the debate on the president's decision to increase funding to Iraq. I personally support sending more funds so that our soldiers can be adequately equipped to have a victory in Iraq(of course this is not what this adminstration wants) and have another day to be alive before they return. However, I want every single dollar to be accounted for by some kind of independent accountant because I guarantee another "9 billion" will go missing.

They had someone there who was accounting for expenditures but if I am not mistaken they cut his job out last year sometime. There was a thread on it here a while back. I never have any luck with the ATS search. He was the whistleblower on several scandals and remarkably they terminated him.


Pie

What makes you think that the money even left the states? It's probably sitting close by to where it was suppose to have left.

OT

June 26, 1990 - Armored Motor Services of America truck robbed of $10.8 million in Henrietta. The truck's driver, Albert M. Ranieri, was an early suspect and later was snared as part of the case against high-profile lawyer Anthony Leonardo. David Farley has been linked to the heist by a special agent, Albert Zenner, but no charges have been brought against him relating to that case.

After his robbing days were over he took a new job.

As part of his plea in a complicated case that included murder-for-hire allegations, Leonardo agreed to testify against Ranieri regarding the heist and the May 2000 murder of Anthony Vaccaro, Leonardo's business partner. Ranieri pleaded guilty to racketeering crimes in 2002, including the armored car robbery and murder. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

I used to work this guy's brother-in-law and he knew all a long and was always planning what to spend his wife’s cut on. The FBI kept these guy's under 24-7 survaliance for 7 years until the statutes of limitations ended. They made sure if Renieri would never be able to spend any of it. He spent 7 years getting receipts for anything he bought down to a pack of gum. What he didn't know was just after the heist the spooked this guy so much that he took the money out to the woods and burned it.


[edit on 8-2-2007 by fiveangelsfrank]

I believe over 15 billion goes to Mexico via Western Union every year and we keep moving along.

So, are you all suggesting that Iraq shouldn't have been given any reconstruction funds?

What are we giving them? It was their money.

I don't think that people are suggesting we shouldn't have funded programs, spent money, hired contractors, and so on - people are just aghast at the complete and total lack of oversight and accounting.

There were provisional government officials whose offices were literally floor to ceiling with shrink-wrapped hundreds.

Millions just walked away in the pockets of various people.

We have no idea who bought what, when, for whom, or even why.

I think it's a mistake to reduce the opposition to this scandal to simply 'people think they shouldn't have been given money' - it's not about the general concept of bringing in cash, it's not even about the amounts involved (which are, admittedly, staggering) - it's about the nonchalant way in which the money was handled, spent, and lost.

If a grocery store clerk loses twenty dollars from the till, they can get canned.

But agents of our government can lose billions without consequences?

No, I think that's ludicrous...

The only reason not to keep accurate accounts is to facilitate theft and misuse.

This is a ridiculous story (not new, BTW, it's been discussed on ATS some time ago), totally beyond all explanation and reason.

Bringing cash into a warzone isn't necessarily a bad idea, in and of itself, if cash is the only way to get things moving in terms of reconstruction. But you have to keep track of it, and how it's spent, and who's in charge at every step of the process. To do otherwise is criminal. Period.

The officials in charge of the money should be brought up on charges, all the way on down, from the policy makers to the bag men. Run them all up the flagpole to air out the stink.

:shk: