Money Disappears As If By Magic!
Poof! More Than $8 Billion Simply Vanished!
By Winter Patriot on 1/31/2005, 11:32pm PT  

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

There's a good article at Antiwar.com about a pile of money that seems to have developed magical powers. Here are the first few paragraphs:

The U.S.-run administration in Baghdad failed to keep track of nearly $9 billion of money it transferred to various Iraqi ministries, according to an official audit released Sunday.

The report by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction says that the now defunct U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) did not exercise adequate managerial control over funds paid to Iraqi government ministries, which employ hundreds of experts from the United States.

This resulted in potentially widespread corruption, including paying salaries to "ghost" employees, and led to the eventual disappearance of $8.8 billion between early 2003 and mid-2004.

"Potentially widespread" corruption? Good phrase! That's right up there with the "possibly innocent" civilians whose home was bombed the other day. Pardon our "catastrophic success"!

What am I bitching about? It's only money, is it not? And we have money to burn, don't we? No? Ok then, why are we so busy burning it?

I do not want to know how many humvees could have been properly armored for 8.8 billion dollars. I do not want to know how many American lives could have been spared. Really. I don't even want to know how many extra votes could have been gained by making sure those 8.8 billion dollars disappeared into the right pockets! Oh that's right! They did disappear into the right pockets! How ironic!!

And how many elections can you buy for 8.8 billion dollars? Don't tell me. I don't want to know!

You can read the entire article but please don't answer any of my questions!!

                 

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