T Minus 122 - Weapons Of Mass Distraction
"When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." -George aWol Bush, Washington, D.C. September 19th, 2001
No, Boy Blunder didn't fire $2,000,000 missiles; he sent pallets of $100 dollar bills to Iraq. So, what happened to those pallets of dough? Here's a cut 'n paste describing how it got to Iraq:
Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.
by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele October 2007
Hidden in plain sight, 10 miles west of Manhattan, amid a suburban community of middle-class homes and small businesses, stands a fortress-like building shielded by big trees and lush plantings behind an iron fence. The steel-gray structure, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is all but invisible to the thousands of commuters who whiz by every day on Route 17. Even if they noticed it, they would scarcely guess that it is the largest repository of American currency in the world.
Officially, 100 Orchard Street is referred to by the acronym eroc, for the East Rutherford Operations Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The brains of the New York Fed may lie in Manhattan, but xeroc is the beating heart of its operations—a secretive, heavily guarded compound where the bank processes checks, makes wire transfers, and receives and ships out its most precious commodity: new and used paper money.(Vanity Fair)
And, what happened to those pallets? Well, we don't know what happened to all of 'em, but here's a cut 'n paste describing what happened to some of 'em:
At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country. With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone? Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil on one of the greatest financial scandals of all time
Callum Macrae and Ali Fadhil The Guardian
Monday March 20 2006
In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 100 miles south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, US, two men - one a former CIA agent and Republican candidate for Congress, the other a former army ranger - are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining $3m (£1.7m) intended for the reconstruction of Iraq. These two events have no direct link, but they are none the less products of the same thing: a financial scandal that in terms of sheer scale must rank as one of the greatest in history.
At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq".(The Guardian)
Well, all those pallets of hundred dollar bills that went missing surely is "one of the greatest financial scandals of all time", as is the current financial crisis that has taken down Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merril Lynch, and - for now - AIG.
But the dough looted here, in the good ol' US of A, wasn't carted away in pallets of hundred dollar bills; it was carried away in the form of checks - payments in the millions to executives as they looted their way to taxpayer bailouts of the messes they created.
The amazing thing is that with all of the messes the GreedOverPrinciples party has created under the misAdministration of Boy Blunder And The Plunderers, is that Bushy McSame even has a chance on November 4th.
Why anyone would seriously consider a vote for John McCain and the message it sends - "all these years of gross incompetence and institutionalized greed and fraud is just fine with me!" is quite simply beyond me.
On November 4th, the American electorate has the chance to hold the GreedOverPrinciples party accountable for the financial disasters they not only allowed, but in all too many cases participated in.
The vote on November 4th should be a "slam dunker - and January 20th, 2009 should be The End Of An Error.
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