There are some out there who would be surprised to learn that the government of Iraq is corrupt as all hell and that the Bush administration -- especially the State Department and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- have been trying to cover up that fact. To those people, I say, "Congratulations on waking from your coma!" I would've sent a card earlier, but I just found you guys were sick.It was over a year ago that I posted that we'd been sending money into Iraq -- $12 billion in cash at that point -- with absolutely no idea where it went. "In one case, bills were wrapped in plastic, put on pallets and shipped to Iraq," I wrote. In that case, the cash was a cargo shipment that could be measured by its tonnage -- 363 tons, to be exact.
The story came from Reuters, in February of 2007:
The U.S. 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 on 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 of Representatives 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.
Of course, Waxman's question was more rhetorical than anything; there are few in this administration who are "in their right mind." Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash to be distributed anywhere? And, more than a year later, not only don't we have anything to show for our largesse, but we don't even know where it all went...
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