Thread: Iraq/Dinar News Before Febuary 12th, 2006

Originally Posted by mountaingirl

(Media-Newswire.com) - Washington -- Days into the implementation of a new security plan, a senior U.S military official said Iraqi forces are meeting their commitments amidst signs of early progress toward breaking the cycle of sectarian violence in Iraq?s capital.

Besides the arrival of a brigade of additional Iraqi troops to reinforce security in Baghdad, Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute cited other positive evidence like the creation of a single unified chain of command for all Iraq?s army and police forces and the establishment of new Iraqi-U.S. neighborhood security stations that will provide a round-the-clock presence. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon February 9, he said 10 joint security stations are in place and plans are to triple that number.

Mark Kimmitt, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, who briefed with Lute, said additional U.S. military and civilian assets are being dedicated to the mission to quell the violence so the Iraqi government can concentrate on political and economic development. Assets and resources, including boosting the number of provincial reconstruction teams, are focused on ensuring success, he said.


?We are provisioned and resourced sufficiently with both physical resources and support from the Maliki government to move forward with the plan,? Kimmitt said. Once the violence abates, the government can deal with unresolved issues like political reconciliation, amnesty, pressing budget needs and passing hydrocarbon legislation, he added.
Media-Newswire.com - Press Release Distribution - PR Agency

In the above article Mark Kimmitt is reported to have said that "[o]nce the
violence abates, the government can deal with unresolved issues like political
reconciliation, amnesty, pressing budget needs and passing hydrocarbon
legislation...."

This bureaucrat obviously doesn't get the point that it is largely because of
unresolved issues such as political reconciliation, amnesty, pressing budget needs and passing hydrocarbon legislation that there is violence in the first instance.

The Iraqi government needs to be working hard on all these fronts at the
same time if it expects to make any kind of serious progress. Mark Kimmitt
should be replaced with someone who knows what he's doing, and Iraqi
government officials who are sitting around on their hands waiting for better
security before they to do something should be replaced as well.

This is war, and yet everyone seems to be pointing fingers, taking vacations
and waiting for someone else to save the day!

So This Plane Lands In Iraq With $4 Billion in Cash, and We Take These Bundles of $100 Bills and We Say Pass Them Around.....
By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com
February 8, 2007

In case you missed it, giant pallets of cash were loaded onto military aircraft in December, 2003 and June, 2004 and shipped into Iraq. $4 billion in cash. 363 tons of cash.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the bloodhound on the trail of this money, asked a reasonable question about this the other day at his committee's hearing.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?" Waxman asked.

Kicking off hearings into all of the financial monkey business triggered by the U.S. occupation, Waxman questioned former U.S. Iraqi overlord Paul Bremer on what happened to as much as $12.7 billion in unaccounted-for cash spent during Bremer's watch. A report from Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said the missing money represented more than half of Bremer's budget from May 2003 to June 2004.

Bremer was unapologetic. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.

"We were working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer argued.

One way that Bremer chose to "get the money working for the Iraqi people" was to give it to private contractors in shrink-wrapped bundles so they could give it away. One Bremer staff member was apparently told to spend nearly $7 million a week.

Frank Willis, a former Transportation Ministry official working under Bremer, explained how the money was handled initially.

"'Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money. We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced."

Alan Grayson, an attorney for Iraq whistleblowers who exposed Iraqi corruption, said:

"The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone. In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did."

According to Grayson:

"Perhaps most puzzling of all is what happened as the day approached for the handover of power (and the remaining funds) to the incoming Iraqi interim government. Instead of carefully conserving the Iraqi money for the new government, the Coalition Provisional Authority went on an extraordinary spending spree. Some $5 billion was committed or spent in the last month alone, very little of it adequately accounted for."

The accounting firm hired by Bremer to oversee the money received a contract worth $1.4 million, but they weren't CPAs and apparently didn't audit the use of the funds.

How much money were "contract" employees given to pass out? No one knows. How much did they pass out and how much might they have kept for themselves? No one knows. When they dispersed money, who got it? Did the money "go to work for the Iraqi people" as Bremer claims? There didn't seem to be a marked improvement in the economy or a drop in the horrendous unemployment rate after that pile of money landed in Iraq.

The Republicans on Waxman's committee didn't seem to have much interest in following the missing money. Most dismissed it as "old news." When it was "new news" and the Republicans ran Congress, they weren't very interested in tracking down war time corruption, either.

Congressman Dan Burton accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. If he's right, the Democrats are going to score a lot of points. Because most Americans undoubtedly agree with Waxman's question:

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?"



Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Politics Today - The Angry Optimist - Original Columns By Joe Rothstein

Originally Posted by PAn8tv

So This Plane Lands In Iraq With $4 Billion in Cash, and We Take These Bundles of $100 Bills and We Say Pass Them Around.....
By Joe Rothstein
Editor, USPolitics.einnews.com
February 8, 2007

In case you missed it, giant pallets of cash were loaded onto military aircraft in December, 2003 and June, 2004 and shipped into Iraq. $4 billion in cash. 363 tons of cash.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the bloodhound on the trail of this money, asked a reasonable question about this the other day at his committee's hearing.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?" Waxman asked.

Kicking off hearings into all of the financial monkey business triggered by the U.S. occupation, Waxman questioned former U.S. Iraqi overlord Paul Bremer on what happened to as much as $12.7 billion in unaccounted-for cash spent during Bremer's watch. A report from Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said the missing money represented more than half of Bremer's budget from May 2003 to June 2004.

Bremer was unapologetic. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.

"We were working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer argued.

One way that Bremer chose to "get the money working for the Iraqi people" was to give it to private contractors in shrink-wrapped bundles so they could give it away. One Bremer staff member was apparently told to spend nearly $7 million a week.

Frank Willis, a former Transportation Ministry official working under Bremer, explained how the money was handled initially.

"'Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills. Piles and piles of money. We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced."

Alan Grayson, an attorney for Iraq whistleblowers who exposed Iraqi corruption, said:

"The environment created by the coalition positively encouraged corruption. American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone. In a free fire zone you can shoot at anybody you want. In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did."

According to Grayson:

"Perhaps most puzzling of all is what happened as the day approached for the handover of power (and the remaining funds) to the incoming Iraqi interim government. Instead of carefully conserving the Iraqi money for the new government, the Coalition Provisional Authority went on an extraordinary spending spree. Some $5 billion was committed or spent in the last month alone, very little of it adequately accounted for."

The accounting firm hired by Bremer to oversee the money received a contract worth $1.4 million, but they weren't CPAs and apparently didn't audit the use of the funds.

How much money were "contract" employees given to pass out? No one knows. How much did they pass out and how much might they have kept for themselves? No one knows. When they dispersed money, who got it? Did the money "go to work for the Iraqi people" as Bremer claims? There didn't seem to be a marked improvement in the economy or a drop in the horrendous unemployment rate after that pile of money landed in Iraq.

The Republicans on Waxman's committee didn't seem to have much interest in following the missing money. Most dismissed it as "old news." When it was "new news" and the Republicans ran Congress, they weren't very interested in tracking down war time corruption, either.

Congressman Dan Burton accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. If he's right, the Democrats are going to score a lot of points. Because most Americans undoubtedly agree with Waxman's question:

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?"



Joe Rothstein, editor of US Politics Today, is a former daily newspaper editor and long-time national political strategist based in Washington, D.C.

U.S. Politics Today - The Angry Optimist - Original Columns By Joe Rothstein

Thanks PAN8tv, you are such a proliferate and topical poster. I am sorry to have a negative to articulate against the 'erudite' "journralist" who authored this. This article is the third or fourth incarnation of a "reporting" on this event that I have seen. Heck, I even posted one of them here a few weeks back. This one, by Joel Goldstein, or whatever his name, clearly portrays the smug, hateful, sarcastic, anti Bush at any cost, and anti-American attitude that these people, the media, are known for. This money was not ours, we took it to protect it from saddim - even if it were passed out in the street to the average Hafez or Turic, it was better spent than left in the coffers of saddum and his ilk.

I beleive that Waxman, as well as Joel Goldberg, would be wet kissed on all cheeks by these terrorists ("insurgents") if he had the stones of our Military and to be present where the rubber meets the road.

Scott Paye

New Thread Here: http://www.rolclub.com/iraqi-dinar-d...hink-tank.html