Damn how much money we have to spend and then lose in a lost war?

Billions and billions of dollars just disappear in Iraq

By JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY

McClatchy Newspapers

Show me the money, or at least some receipts scribbled on the backs of old envelopes and grocery bags.

This week, we were treated to the spectacle of the former U.S. civilian overlord of Iraq, Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, squirming in the hot seat as he attempted with little success to explain what he did with 363 TONS of newly printed, shrink-wrapped $100 bills he had flown to Baghdad.

That's $12 billion in cold, hard American cash, and no one, especially Bremer, seems to know where it went.

It may be an urban legend, but the late Sen. Everett Dirksen, the Illinois Republican, is widely quoted as saying: "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." If he didn't say it, he should have.

Bremer, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role in totally screwing up the first two years of the Iraq Occupation, said that a lot of the cash was delivered to ministries of the Iraqi government to meet payrolls that were patently fraudulent.

The Department of Defense's special inspector general for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, said that a 2005 audit he conducted found that in some ministries the payroll was padded with up to 90 percent "ghost employees" - people who didn't really work there or perhaps didn't really exist.

Bremer said that he decided to provide the money to meet those payrolls, even though he knew they were bogus, for fear of starting riots and demonstrations among the Iraqis, real and imagined.

After all, the former czar told the representatives, it wasn't really our money anyway. It was Iraqi money - oil earnings and bank accounts seized from Saddam Hussein's government - that we were holding in trust.

I can think of no period in American history when we sat idly by while $12 billion just disappeared, poof, without a paper trail; without heads rolling; without someone going to prison.

And all this was happening at a time in the war when American soldiers and Marines were going without properly armored vehicles, without lifesaving body armor and even without some of the weapons they needed.

What does it take for the American people's gag reflex to kick in? When do we begin to realize that this is only the tip of an iceberg of fraud, waste, abuse and corruption perpetrated on a monumental scale by the Bush administration, its buddies among the military contractors and their handmaidens on Capitol Hill?

The cost of this war is swiftly building toward a trillion dollars. How much of that was siphoned off by crooked and incompetent contractors, greedy defense corporations and Iraqi crooks in a government that we created and installed?

No one in the congressional hearing has yet asked Bremer or the inspector general how much of that $12 billion in cash was handed out to American contractors in Baghdad, although that question begs to be asked and answered.

During the dark days of World War II, Congress established a Committee on War Profiteering and put a little-known senator from Missouri, Harry S. Truman, in charge. Truman, a veteran of combat service in World War I, was a bulldog.

His committee went after not only those who stole money but also those who provided shoddy or worthless equipment and supplies for our troops. He had the power to shut down an offending company or contractor, and he used it.

Where's our Truman Committee today? Where are the righteous representatives of the people charged with standing guard over our troops and our money?

We've wasted $600 billion on a war that we're losing, day by bloody day, at a time when our president presents a federal budget that cuts Medicare to find billions for more that war. The Decider boasts that if we do things his way, America's wealthiest individuals won't have to pay even one dollar more in taxes.

Meanwhile, the people's representatives, on both sides of the aisle, round up the contributions they need for re-election by putting themselves in the pockets of the very robber barons they're supposed to be investigating, interrogating and policing.

Perhaps we should let a no-bid cost-plus contract to Halliburton to construct large additions to the country club federal prisons to accommodate a population explosion in the years ahead. Or, for convenience sake, maybe we could just add a prison wing to the $500 million George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Edited by vulkan02 - 08-Feb-2007 at 23:59

Originally posted by Timotheus We've wasted $600 billion on a war that we're losing, day by bloody day, at a time when our president presents a federal budget that cuts Medicare to find billions for more that war. The Decider boasts that if we do things his way, America's wealthiest individuals won't have to pay even one dollar more in taxes. 600 billion is a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions we're going to lose over the idiotic program called Medicare.

we have a Medicare not sure its the same thing (a safety net of medical treatments that are either free or subsidized by the fed government),

we are not doing so bad, most Aussies are proud of it.

Well after having done a major in HR, I want to comment in the usage of resources. I'm not sure how it works in America, but in Australia medicare is a system which actually profits the country. You see, creating a human being takes an awfully huge investment of resources. Think about it for a moment.

First you have a woman who is partially or fully prevented from work for a period of at least a few months. Following this, there is the cost in giving birth which normally includes professional medical practicioners being employed. After this comes thousands of dollars in food, clothes, healthcare (one would hope), dental care, transport and education (typically government funded). And these are among many other things.

At the end of these 18 years and 9 months, or perhaps sooner if the child drops out of school at a younger age, you now have a fully fledged human resource of varying degrees of work ethic, reliability, intelligence and skill. At the bare minimum you will have an unreliable ditch digger, at best a top notch scholar needing only a scholarship to cure cancer or AIDS. In my experience, 95% of these human resources at minimum do have the combination of attributes required to make them productive members of society. This can be increased depending on what education, welfare, workplace and legal statutes and laws which the state decides to implement.

Suffice to say, the vast majority of these human resources are very much capable of being members of society who pay tax, generally obey the law to an acceptable standard, fill a niche role in the job market and play their part in producing future human resources (bringing up kids). How well they do this once again depends on what social, welfare, legal and education policies the society puts in place. These policies either enhance or lower the capacity of these human resources (citizens) to exist as positive contributors.

The first point I will make about medicare is that it encourages a responsible and supportive society. I, like most citizens, am a taxpayer. When I sit down over my receipts, pay slips and transaction records at the beginning of the financial year; I am tantalised by the prospect of being untruthful about how much tax I should pay. With my dual citizenship and financial training, I could very easily engineer to have my assets banked offshore and then cheat my government out of considerable funds which they are entitiled to. OR I could simply fudge the parts of my tax return the government won't be able to audit with any certainty. And why wouldn't I? I make a profit, so it makes sense that I should. Strangely enough, I don't. Because I know that when I pay my taxes, those funds actually go into projects which enhance the wellbeing of the nation I live in and the lives of my fellow citizens. So I end up paying a few more cents in the dollar that I earn, in return this translates into my fellow citizens being freed from pain, suffering and preventable fatality. I lose some cash, but in return I feel I am giving back something positive to a country which ensures my security, prosperity and safety. Who knows, one day in 40 years time I may have grandchildren who fall on hard times and need a bit of help to get them back on their feet. If I am dead, I want piece of mind knowing that the community to which I have contributed, will take care of my loved ones if I am unable to. For that reason, I pay my taxes in full, because I believe they take care of what matters. In a society where tax money does not go towards protecting and bettering the lives of its people, why on earth wouldn't you open that offshore account and just cheat the system?

Back to my original train of thought, as I pointed out the creation of a human resource is a time, money and effort intensive process. And this investment usually churns out a human resource who contributes in a number of ways to a successfully functioning society. To not provide a person with medical care, you can be depriving them of thousands of hours of labour every year, which results in lost revenue for the tax system and a less efficient labour market. Furthermore, if the ailment is serious enough and you do not assist that human resource with medical treatment, that human resource could die. This means thousands more lost labour hours, all after such a massive investment in creating the human resource in the first place. By allocating a relatively small amount of money to public health, on the other hand, the investment should typically yield a much more abundant supply of labour, and more productive and motivated labour at that. At the end of the day, the investment results in a result which ethically and financially more than pays for itself. By looking at medicare simply as a cost, without examining how the policy results in a positive return on investment, you are economically shooting yourself in the foot by wishing to destroy this form of social welfare.

Speaking of returns on investment, let''s look at the war in Iraq. How much profit has actually been made there? Seriously, how much? I will bet you the amount is MUCH lower than the cost of financing the war. They have not dug out even 500 billion in oil, I doubt they have even got 150 billion worth of oil out of there. Now let's look at the cost of the war, $600 billion is the current cost of the war itself, and this is climbing. Then there is the plummeting American prestige worldwide, which I assure you does translate negatively for American businesses operating internationally. Then there is the cost of war pensions, taking care of wounded soldiers, the social cost of traumatised servicemen. Add to this the intangible but still urgently important cost of America not being able to deploy itself as effectively in other theatres because so much of its military resources are tied up in the losing war in Iraq. As you can plainly see, the Iraq war is one of the most catastrophicly damaging returns on investment we are ever likely to see in our lifetime.

Comparing the costs and benefits of Medicare to Iraq, I know which investment I would rather put my money in.

It really is criminal... And what was Clinton almost impeached for? Lying about an embarrassing private sexual affair? Bush takes the whole nation to WAR, which has taken HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of lives and ruined MILLIONS more and hardly a word is spoken against him, officially. What a bloody scandal.

Sex = bad
Killing people for profit = OK

Edited by Zagros - 09-Feb-2007 at 14:04

Or GIs? I am sure it can go pretty quickly and stealthily in all directions considering the current Iraqi political, social and economic climate.

Originally posted by Zagros Or GIs? I am sure it can go pretty quickly and stealthily in all directions considering the current Iraqi political, social and economic climate.

With even half that money, the insurgency there could make Hezbollah look like a bunch of school kids with slingshots.


Edited by vulkan02 - 09-Feb-2007 at 20:01

If the thieves were high ranking enough, smuggle it through Kuwait, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Syria or through the UN or store it or all. A lot of it will also be distributed by now, used for winning favours.

How Much Is A Billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" casually think about whether you do, or don't, want that politician spending your tax money!!

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but an advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure in perspective in one of its releases:

A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.

A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.

A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

And....

A billion dollars ago, was only 8 hours and 20 minutes at the rate Washington spends