GOP watched $12 billion in cash disappear in Iraq

[Guarding $12 billion in cash - photo from the guardian.co.uk)

I'd forgotten about this, but was forcefully reminded by Jon Ponder in a post at Pensito Review.

In 2003, it happened. Bush and his GOP cronies took almost "$12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent. The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee."

Why wasn't something done and the culprits hauled off to justice?

The GOP was in charge! You know, the same SOBs that are now fighting the stimulus bill claiming, as usual, that it includes too much wasteful spending. Hah!

Ponder notes further how incredibly stupid it is for the Dems to allow themselves to be put on the defensive about the stimulus bill "by the same Republicans, who, with George Bush, ran the national debt into the trillions in just six short years."

In fact, says Ponder, "this would be a good time to remind Sen. McConnell, Rep. Boehner and the rest that it was they who sat idly by while Bush's men shrink-wrapped $12 billion in U.S. currency -- 363 tons of $100 bills - loaded it onto pallets and flew it on transport planes into the Iraq war zone in mid-2003.

"The money vanished into thin air, and Republicans have stonewalled Democrats' efforts to find out what happened to it ever since."


Ponder's article is here. A more detailed article by the guardian.co.uk. is here.