Oh, about that "missing" 9 billion dollars...(Rummy).

[Atman]

I've posted this before, yet for some reason it never, ever gets mentioned in the media when they question where all the missing money is. Now, technically, this didn't go "missing," it's just that no one had to account for it. Still, it begs the question...WTF??

Check it out, from October 2003...

Rumsfeld's $9 Billion Slush Fund

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Friday, Oct. 10, 2003, at 5:42 PM ET

Rummy's rainy day fund

For all the debate over President Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for military operations and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, no one seems to have noticed that the sum includes a slush fund of at least $9.3 billion, which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can spend pretty much as he pleases.

Last week, the congressional armed services committees—and this week the House Appropriations Committee—marked up the supplemental, excising a few hundred million that Bush had requested for new hospitals, housing, and sanitation. But the committees didn't touch a nickel of the slush fund—and there's a cravenly wink-and-nudge reason why they didn't.

Most of the supplemental request is fairly straightforward: $32 billion to maintain the tempo of military operations, $18 billion for military personnel, $5.1 billion for security and a new Iraqi army, $5.7 billion for electrical power, and so forth.

But deep within, the document proposes the following allowance:

Not less than $1.4 billion, to remain available until expended, may be used, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for payments to reimburse Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations, for logistics, military and other support provided, or to be provided, to United States military operations.

First, look closely at those first three words: Not less than. In other words, Rumsfeld could transfer more than $1.4 billion for this purpose—how much more, who can say? The section goes on to say that Rumsfeld must notify the appropriate congressional committees whenever he uses any of this money, and that the payments must be made with the concurrence of the secretary of state. But otherwise, the bill emphasizes that he alone determines how to spend this money "and such determination is final and conclusive."

http://www.slate.com/id/2089674/

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[Straight Shooter]

1. I just posted the same info on Crooks & Liars a few minutes ago.

Where did all that money go? *wink nudge*

Covert operations, and a nice little piece of acreage somewhere, you betcha.

[The Count]

2. But, somehow, no one knows where it went...

[Atman]

3. "...the bill emphasizes that he alone determines how to spend this money..."

And no one can question him, although he was supposed to inform Congress. I never heard of any of that happening, did you?

.

[rgbecker]

4. I don't suppose any of this could have been freed up for ......

a pool table, or TV for Building 18. That'd be asking too much. FTA.

[Ezlivin]

5. On Sept 10, 2001 Rumsfeld said "...we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."

Of course when Sept 11 occurred, it erased this from our memories. (And in another bizarre coincidence on a day filled with them, the terrorist strike at the Pentagon struck the finance division whose job it was to do this financial sleuthing.)

CBS News, among others, covered this.

Rumsfeld is guilty on many different levels. He is no less than a war criminal in my estimation. YMMV