U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The 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 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 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.

On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.

It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 30.
Bremer: Cash requested by Iraqis

L Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance.

"He said, 'I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place, I won't know how to get the money here,"' Bremer said.

"So these shipments were made at the explicit request of the Iraqi minister of finance to forward fund government expenses, a perfectly, seems to me, legitimate use of his money," Bremer told lawmakers.

Democrats led by Waxman also questioned whether the lack of oversight of $12 billion in Iraqi money that was disbursed by Bremer and the CPA somehow enabled insurgents to get their hands on the funds, possibly through falsifying names on the government payroll.

"I have no knowledge of monies being diverted. I would certainly be concerned if I thought they were," Bremer said. He pointed out that the problem of fake names on the payroll existed before the U.S.-led invasion.

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.

"We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer told lawmakers. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.

Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.

"We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/06/iraq.cash.reut/index.html

I don't know if this was good or bad but it sure looked expensive.
 
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tamarin

House Member
Jun 12, 2006
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This reminds me of the investigative report that aired shortly after the invasion of Iraq. US soldiers had stumbled on a bunker that contained case after case of US currency. Some soldiers had helped themselves and attempted to send some home. The report deduced the majority of such shipments had been intercepted.
There's a lot of green stuff around if you're lucky enough to stumble onto it.
 

gopher

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 26, 2005
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Reminds me of box loads of cash that had been found throughout parts of Central America when Reagan was spreading his brand of terrorism there. The monies were being funneled into terrorist death squads and croaking off Native Americans by the tens of thouands in the name of freeing the world from the clutches of some nebulous communist plot.
 

tamarin

House Member
Jun 12, 2006
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Which begs the question: self, noble thing thou art, would you keep such money if you stumbled on it?
Yes, yesssssssssssssssssssss! Being noble shouldn't necessitate you also be stupid.
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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How two-faced stupid and ridiculous is the government of the United States...

Who uses cash...people who don't want a paper trail created...arms dealers, drug dealers, payment to mercenaries (most of whom prefer Swill Francs I've heard) and of course governments hiding their activities....
 
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CDNBear

Custom Troll
Sep 24, 2006
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Isn't this just the return of Iraqi money, or did I miss something.

If my perception is correct, then is this not the appropriate thing to do, return the money to the country it belongs to???
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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Isn't this just the return of Iraqi money, or did I miss something.

If my perception is correct, then is this not the appropriate thing to do, return the money to the country it belongs to???

Good point Bear...steal from the Iraqis then return what you stole from them and claim you're a good-guy....HAWGWASH!

If you're one of those fortunates who gets a tax refund...does the government mail you cash? NO and the reason why governments don't mail cash is many-fold but principly so they can avoid sending wads of cash (makes a great target for the mail-room thief) and why bother since the paper trail that is left to the government the banks who cash those refund cheques and the deposit records of recipients isn't going to disappear or get lost...without effort at least...

Bear this is clearly a practice of questionable good sense and I fear given the legacy of lies and un-truth dolloped out by Washington DC...just another way to hide discreditable conduct.
 

missile

House Member
Dec 1, 2004
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Saint John N.B.
AAccording to CNN,12 billion dollars sent to Iraq is unaccounted for...but could somehow wind up in the Republican Party Election funds:)
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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I'm waiting for someone to crank up the wail on Anti-Americanism....

Are there any other instances of national governments paying back money they stole from their "enemy" by sending pallets of cash?

Until advised otherwise, I'll have to conclude that once again America demonstrates it's stupidity if not the lengths it's administratin will go to in pusuit of its agenda of corruption.
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
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LOLOLOL..... you people can't be satisfied.... what an unhappy collection....

Even when something which belongs to the Iraqi people is returned you fire off insults.....
 

Kreskin

Doctor of Thinkology
Feb 23, 2006
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Hey Curio, why did the US have UN food-for-oil money in the first place? I thought that was a UN scam? Was it accepted by political good samaritans? Was there a separate trust account established for these funds? It would be interesting to see the accounting of the pallets of cash. I'm assuming it didn't come from the same fund where your taxes go.
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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Kreskin

You can wrap any nonesense in the American flag and Americans will salute.

Always have always will.

Americans don't regard themselves as citizens of the world they regard themselves as 1. American
2. Republican/Democrat
3. hapless victims to a world that simply doesn't understand that America is always right.
 

hermanntrude

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jun 23, 2006
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Newfoundland!
Kreskin

You can wrap any nonesense in the American flag and Americans will salute.

Always have always will.

Americans don't regard themselves as citizens of the world they regard themselves as 1. American
2. Republican/Democrat
3. hapless victims to a world that simply doesn't understand that America is always right.

a bit of a generalisation but it does seem to ring true sometimes
 

Curiosity

Senate Member
Jul 30, 2005
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Hey Curio, why did the US have UN food-for-oil money in the first place? I thought that was a UN scam? Was it accepted by political good samaritans? Was there a separate trust account established for these funds? It would be interesting to see the accounting of the pallets of cash. I'm assuming it didn't come from the same fund where your taxes go.

Kreskin

Try to keep up fella...you are so busy hunting down nefarious criminals you must have missed the meetings earlier this year.....The funds were held until the end of 2006 and then disbursed....just
as your article states.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060325/wl_nm/iraq_un_probe_dc


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N.-established panel that investigated the Iraq oil-for-food program will stay open until the end of the year to allow prosecutors access to its documents, the United Nations said on Friday.
Investigators and prosecutors from 28 countries have already requested documents from the Independent Inquiry Committee since it released its final report on October 27, said Michael Holtzman, spokesman for the IIC, whose Manhattan office has been reduced to a skeletal staff.
The IIC had been scheduled to close at the end of this month.

The panel, headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, was commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to examine charges of corruption in the defunct $64 billion program, the largest ever handled by the world body.
"The office's exclusive function is to work with national law enforcement authorities of member states seeking to follow up on the findings of the final IIC report," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
"Obviously for national law enforcement authorities it is much easier at this point for them to continue dealing with the IIC as they are the ones who collected all the documents and they are the ones who have the historical knowledge of the investigation," Dujarric said.
Officials, companies or politicians from some 40 countries were implicated in the scandal.
The oil-for-food operation began in December 1996 and ended in 2003. It was designed to ease the impact on ordinary Iraqis of U.N. sanctions, imposed in mid-1990s after Baghdad's troops invaded Kuwait.
The U.N. program, supervised by the U.N. Security Council, allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil in exchange for a large variety of goods. But Volcker's inquiry showed he bilked the program by $1.8 billion and then earned another estimated $8 billion by selling oil outside the program.
Saddam either demanded kickbacks from companies doing business in Iraq or paid politicians, groups and government officials to lobby against the pervasive sanctions.
Some 15 people have been charged in the United States. France, Switzerland, Australia, India and others have also started investigations but there has been little news from Russia, where many of the firms and officials named are based. Dujarric said the United Nations was "very much encouraged" by the Iraqi authorities to extend the mandate of the IIC."
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
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Hey Herm

I've never gotten into how I loathe the British Empire...From the dunce Chamberlain right through Maggie Thatcher and on to Tony Blair...

The anals of history have recorded the ruin of many nations graced by Grape Britain...India, hell you folk were so eager to get rid of your criminals you created Australia...

Must peeve you folk to no end that now for all intents and purposes it's an American colony...

Keep smilin Herm :)
 

MikeyDB

House Member
Jun 9, 2006
4,612
63
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Yeah Kreskin c'mon any day now we will find those weapons of mass destruction just like the Americans believe...

Given the legacy of lies domestically and internationally that the world now recognizes as uniquely American in origin for anyone to believe that the U.S. placed in charge of investigating anything wouldn't return a conclusion that everyone else was bad..corrupt...untruthful....

Takes one to know one after all...
 

#juan

Hall of Fame Member
Aug 30, 2005
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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.

If the dirty, corrupt,UN ran the "oil for food program", how did the Americans get the money?

What is meant by "surplus dollars"? If these pallets of money were "surplus", where is the rest of it?

It seems to me that Iraq pumped out more than $4billion dollars in oil over these years....