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February 13, 2005
Millions paid to contractors... in cash
No wonder $9 billion is missing. The AP:
U.S. officials in postwar Iraq paid a contractor by stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack and routinely made cash payments around Baghdad from a pickup truck, a former official with the U.S. occupation government says.
Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces that served as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority, former CPA official Frank Willis said.
Maybe I'm naive to how things are done with government contractors, but don't most of them have bank accounts and headquarters with accounts receivable departments... in the U.S.? And isn't the Pentagon... in the U.S.?
What the hell kind of banana republic are we living in now? And how can you Bush-apologists stand to look yourselves in the mirror? This is just embarassing. I mean, Bremer received the Medal of Freedom! Deluded! Deluded, deluded, deluded. We've crossed over. America has become a fairy tale.
Posted By Bob Cesca | February 13, 2005 07:41 PM | DIGG ME!
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Comments
It would seem that this is simply the contractors being smarter than the Gov, and the Gov being fucking clueless. Think about this.
Yes, we can pay some of it all stateside, but if you have to build, say, a building in Iraq, you need money for supplies, local workers, ect. Somebody has to take CASH from somewhere with banks, to Iraq. As if the civillians want to cart millions in cash around in Iraq, risking not only the money, but their lives. No...they get Uncle Sam to do it.
I doubt that this is really paycheck money that could just be done stateside, I mean, think about it, if you were an American worker in Iraq, wouldnt you PREFER a stateside check to all the money in a sack in your hotel room or barracks?
The transactions DO have to be done largely in cash, its just a matter of who's cash it is when it gets puttered around a war zone. In this case, it was OURS instead of the companies.
What's suprising, is not that a lot of cash went missing in a war zone, thats to be expected, but that so much of it went TOTALLY UNACCOUNTED FOR. I mean, if they just a had a list of where it went, hell, they could even throw some lies on it.
5-4-04 = Gunmen stole the bag again, 1.2 million missing. So much for the orphanage.
I mean, you cant steal a pack of gum from WalMart without getting tagged on video these days, why the fuck cant we account for just a LITTLE BIT of this.
So yeah, im not suprised a lot of money is not where it should be, I'm just pissed we're so damn clueless about where it went. I'm hoping some army unit had one hell of a Kegger. Thats about the best case senario I can come up with.
Posted by: Lactar ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.bobcesca.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 14, 2005 05:14 AM
