U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq

[SHRED]

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Wait a minute...I thought Bush wasn't a "nation builder"?

Oh that's right...he isn't.
This money never made it into legitimate rebuilding projects.

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Lawmaker: U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq

• The Federal Reserve sent over $4 billion in cash to Iraq in 2003 and 2004
• Cash, weighing 363 tons, loaded on to palettes and flown on military aircraft
• Funds came from Iraqi oil exports, Saddam Hussein regime's frozen assets
• U.S. administrator denies funds were diverted to the insurgency


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said Tuesday.

The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

MORE: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/06/iraq.cash.reut/index.html



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[patrice]

1. The only entrepeneurs that money went to were Insurgents. n/t

[rurallib]

2. I could have used a small pallet - for health insurance.

[Faux pas]

4. Amen to that. And I bet our military on the front would be thrilled

to know that their government is handing cash to Iraq and taking away their GI benefits. If that doesn't make them all want to go awol, I don't know what would. America is an ass.

[tom_paine]

3. The Biggest "Mafia Envelope" OF ALL TIME

That was, without a doubt, the greatest heist pulled by State Criminals right out inthe open.

And it is but one tiny part of the BushCheney rape and crushing of the American People.

[Beelzebud]

5. Honestly. Can you imagine seeing a pallet full of money.. My god...

We have let the foxes guard the hen house for far too long...

[TomInTib]

6. A fiend of mine is ex-CIA (retired military)...

He spent months hanging out in a tent in Iraq handing out $60,000 packs of cash to anyone (tribal leaders) who bothered to show up.

Said he had never seen anything like it, anywhere.

[Nikki Stone1]

8. Planned chaos?

?

[TomInTib]

10. Good point.

He said that they were handing out duffels of cash to guys who had to be restrained from fighting with each other while they were standing in line to get money.

Said it was absolutely surreal.

[Nikki Stone1]

12. Leads me to believe that chaos IS what they wanted.

Goes along with disbanding the Iraqi army and allowing it to melt into the regular population. The chaos may have been a strategy to ultimately get US troops into Iran, but I wonder if this chaos isn't hiding something else. Remember, many supplies are NOT going to the troops--body armor and the like. There is no desire to win in any conventional sense. So what is actually being hidden behind the floor show?

[TomInTib]

15. Oh, definitely

To insure that the War on Terror would go long, we had to fund it.

All of that "Mission Accomplished", "Bring it on" bullshit was just smoke to make sure that it would never end.

I, along with all of my old SO buddies, have been scratching our heads about this very thing for a while.

This whole effing thing was an engineered screw-up.

[Nikki Stone1]

16. One thing that has happened is the destruction of the US treasury and world reputation

Is the real purpose to destroy us? Change us?

[TomInTib]

17. And most of the Middle Class

Divide and conquer.

Never forget that.

And they now have it worked down to a science, a formula.

Medicare, VetCare, Health Issues, Schools, you name it....

Either gone or on the way out.

We are but a matter of years from the age of the Wealthy versus the Rest of Us.

Actually, it has always been this way. But now it will be In-Your-Face kind of shit.

See you in Costa Rica (I have always had a plan, you see..).

[bigluckyfeet]

13. Cash is easier

to steal.

[Beelzebud]

9. Insane... What a waste. While New Orleans dies a slow agonizing death, we throw it away in Iraq...

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

14. Then there was the story told by the now-dead UNMIK guy.

Said he got an urgent "Drop c**k, grab socks" message while he was serving in Kosovo. Loaded him, a bunch of well-armed buddies and some obvious suits, along with some crates, onto a plane with no windows. They flew for many hours, landed, deplaned and put everyone and everything on some blacked-out Blackhawks. Flew for a while longer. Landed. Discovered they had landed in an old Russian base, built into the side of a mountain. Unloaded everyone and everything, were met by obvious Middle-Eastern types.

Crates were opened.

More money than he ever thought possible. Money was left there.

He's dead now. His vehicle took an RPG in the door, right where he was sitting.

[LSK]

7. hearing repeat is on CSPAN2 right now

[mod mom]

11. STOLEN ELECTIONS ARE EXPENSIVE!

[cassiepriam]

18. Fits with the BushCo style of bribing or threatening people into compliance.

Has worked quite well here in the US.

[Lisa]

19. New Orleans Fire Dept. could use a couple of those shrink-wrapped "bricks" ($200k each?)

... to help rebuild their firehouse.


http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html
"The 15-month proconsulship of the CPA disbursed nearly $20 billion, two-thirds of it in cash, most of which came from the Development Fund for Iraq that had replaced the UN Oil for Food Program and from frozen and seized Iraqi assets. 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."
"Thus the country was awash in unaccountable money. British sources report that the CPA contracts that were not handed out to cronies were sold to the highest bidder, with bribes as high as $300,000 being demanded for particularly lucrative reconstruction contracts. The contracts were especially attractive because no work or results were necessarily expected in return. It became popular to cancel contracts without penalty, claiming that security costs were making it too difficult to do the work. A $500 million power-plant contract was reportedly awarded to a bidder based on a proposal one page long. After a joint commission rejected the proposal, its members were replaced by the minister, and approval was duly obtained. But no plant has been built."

By my calculations, a cashpak of $1.6 million dollars in $100 bills, if the 363 tons estimate is correct, would weigh about 97 pounds. (12 billion dollars in hundreds would make up 7500 cashpaks.) So, a 24-lb. stack of hundreds -- 4000 of them -- the report about people playing football with shrink-wrapped "bricks" of hundreds suggests that those things had to be light enough to toss around, and a similar size to a football.

[LuckyLib]

20. A small pallet went into Swiss Bank Accounts for Iraqis, and the rest went into

Cayman Island accounts for Halliburton and the Boys.