Winning hearts and minds. None could have gone to the jihad, you say? And why not, exactly? What effective safeguards were in place to ensure that those who received money in Iraq had no sympathies for the jihad? With the U.S. government in massive denial about the nature of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism itself, it is nothing short of inconceivable that any such safeguards were in place. "Audit: US cannot account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds," by Tarek El-tablawy for AP, July 28:
BAGHDAD - A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.
"Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money," said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money "should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation."
The report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction accused the Defense Department of lax oversight and weak controls, though not fraud.
"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," the audit said....
Yep.
Interesting. A buddy of mine told me what it's like to be requried to carry around the equivalent of a quarter million US dollars in local currency, constantly replenished, and pass it out to locals for "this project" and "that project."
Where indeed is our money going?
These fiascos -- the fiasco in Iraq, the fiasco in Afghanistan or rather in "Af-Pak," all reflect the inability of our leaders to think before they leap, their inability to reconsider, until many wasteful years have quite unnecessarily gone by -- they haven't reconsidered yet, but they will -- their chosen method to deal with the enemies in the "war on terrorism," because they have not allowed themselves to understand the ideology of Islam.
And because, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Pakistan, we find we must "work with" those we call "our friends" -- that is, those who, for the moment, are willing to take our money and our arms, and are willing to inveigle us to fight whatever local enemies they have, while never for a moment actually becoming our real allies, which would require them to reject the attitudes that Islam so profoundly inculcates, that is reject their hostility and suspicion toward us, and their failure to recognize our goodwill and generosity even when it is staring the in the face, but always to misconstrue it, always to regard us with suspicion and ill-concealed -- if concealed at all - hostility, because they are Muslims and we, you see, are Infidels.
So the wast will continue. And we will not dare to consider that removing ourselves, and not sending aid, and allowing these states and societies to relapse into the aggression and violence that comes naturally to Muslim states, because the Qur'an, Hadith, Sira, are full of such aggression and violence, and no longer trying to prevent, and instead looking with grim favor on, their sectarian, ethnic, and economic fissures, and not only doing that, but recognizing that if Muslim states are no longer the recipients of Western aid and Western intervention of all kinds, they will seek their own level, and their own level -- if they are deprived of access to Western education, Western medicine, Western technology, even Western slave-wage workers -- will cause them to appear, again, as in fact they always, under the surface gleam provided by the glitter of the oil-and-gas gold, were and will remain.
And if Iraq and Afghanistan have been expensive fiascos, where the only "victory" that means anything -- a weakening of the Camp of Islam -- can be achieved only once we pull out, and because we pull out -- so are all those efforts to treat Muslim immigrants as just like other immigrants, and to believe that with special programs, special solicitousness, special this and special that, they can be truly integrated into Infdiel nation-states. How can that be, when the codified apotheosis of Islam, the Shari'a, flatly contradicts in letter and spirit the laws and customs, the political and legal institutions, the social arrangments, the everything, that makes the West the West? How can Muslims, raised up to regard the world as divided forever between Believers and Unbelievers, Muslims and Infidels, and inculcated with the belief that between the two a state of permanent war must exist, and further inculated with the notion that Muslims must everywhere work to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam.
This is not very hard to understand. It's not elementary particle physics. More than a billion people -- Muslims -- understand it. Why can't a few million non-Muslims understand this, or even a handful -- a handful would do -- of our political leaders, for if that handful spoke clearly and lucidly about the matter, no one could deny the truth of what they said, and support for them would become a decuman, a tidal wave, a tsunami.
for those of us who were there we saw how the money was distributed it passed from american hands into governing parties thru third party exchange into outstretching subsidaries with sympathetic parties usually extremist or for settling dept with foreign bodies ( the three common are know iran, syria, saudi arabia) what is not know is that that figure is almost double. that amount thru slush fund or white wash accounts intersected thru foriegn parties
all and all it leads back to the same thing no accountability it was money madness during the invasion and most was never tracked after it left the principle
always follow the money it will always lead you to the source... when we hand our moniitary funds over to sympathetic parties or former regiem members what outcome could we possibly hope for
rebuilding a nation... a good excuse for continuing the war effort
but take comfort we are always here always ready to grant you request... if they wish global jihad that can always be arranged
freedom by any means necessary
never surrender
And if Iraq and Afghanistan have been expensive fiascos, where the only "victory" that means anything -- a weakening of the Camp of Islam -- can be achieved only once we pull out, and because we pull out -- so are all those efforts to treat Muslim immigrants as just like other immigrants, and to believe that with special programs, special solicitousness, special this and special that, they can be truly integrated into Infdiel nation-states.
Yup, time to go. We been there too long already. A hundred years is not enough. Let them work it out amongst themselves. Not our problem, too bad so much of our wealth was wasted there. Dumb US policy. I agreed with Hugh, us pulling out is "victory", as Islam eats itself.
They could sue us for breach of fiduciary duty. They have a point and they might succeed. We held their money with an agreement to use it for infrastructure rebuilding. We were incredibly lazy and stupid in the disbursement of those funds. We breached our duty to be a watch guard for that money. We had the means and wherewithal to do that, but we didn't. I don't care what your political persuasion is. We were sloppy with somebody else's money. It parallels the domestic economic situation. We need to get back to some basic American values. Perhaps start with the way we raise our children. Instead of dumping praise on them for every thing they do, maybe crack them across the face when they do something exceptionally deceptive. We have to change the way people presently think about responsibility and moral behavior. We're almost to the point where the lowly mail clerk fancies himself as a robber baron.
This headline gave me a smile because I thought you refer to the Jihad of America against Islamic countries.
Not against countries, against Islam...All Americans should jihad against Islam...I have convinced many myself...Not as many as Spencer, but I'm trying to catch up...
Face it, the political powers that be think of it as just other people's money and they are not going to make a lot of effort being careful with it. There's no penalty for wasting your tax money.
How much went to the jihad? U.S. can't find $8.7 billion in Iraq funds
++++++++++++++
Simple.
8.7 billion dollars went in funding jihad.
Your tax dollar at work.
Paying for Pakistani infrastructure when their citizens evade tax at a startling rate.
Paying bribes to corrupt people, in corrupt countries, with corrupt governments, under control of corrupt religious leaders.
Paying to provide defense and protection to European nations, so they can criticize us and benefit from a guns and butter equation where they dont have to collect taxes to spend on guns, only butter and healthcare.
Gee I am glad that the govt will soon institute one of the largest tax increases in history by inaction on the Bush tax cuts and estate tax going back to pre 1990 levels. With Cap and trade and higher costs for transportation and utilities, I just cant wait.
That $8.7 Billion is the money earned (or to be earned) by hard working Americans that is put down another government rathole.
Islamic terrorism and demands for jizya are time-honored traditions.
I only recently learned that as late as 1800 the young American republic was paying some 20% of its annual budget to pay off the extortion levied against it by the Muslim rulers of the Barbary Coast.
How many of us were aware of the huge slaving businesses then thriving in the North African Muslim enclaves? Raids against Iceland in which hundreds of the young and nubile were kidnapped, elderly or unwanted Iclanders locked into churches that were set on fire? A raid on Baltimore, Ireland, which Samuel Pepys wrote about, that carried away the entire population into slavery? Sections of the Italian coast were raided so severely that settlement there was discouraged.
It's been estimated that upwards of 1,250,000 Europeans were enslaved during that period.
Only the US Marines' attack on Tripoli, along with European bombardments and colonization, finally put an end to this barbaric practice.
Yet we are still paying jizyah to people who despise us.
Go figure.
This is not the first time large sums have gone missing. In a previous report, a year or two ago, Stuart Bowen discovered $9 billion that could not be accounted for.
And what about the tens of billions that, in a sense, were "unaccounted for" because handed out to local Iraqis, distributed in a mad and futile effort to "win friends" among Muslims who were delighted at the bonanza the foolish Americans provided. How many Iraqis made out like gangbusters, how many hundreds or thousands are now millionaires with apartments in London and Paris, thanks to American taxpayers and their unrivalled and apparently endless generosity?
Bin Laden, and other members of Al Qaeda, have said that they wanted to inflict economic damage on America, by causing it to spend and overspend.
We have spent three trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are now spending more money to make sure that the Yemeni government -- our "ally" -- stays our "ally" and we win friends -- which friends? the Houthis to the north? the Sunnis in the south? the pseudo-Marxists semi-secularists who want independence for Aden? -- in Yemen. And we might do the same, if given half a chance by the Shebaab, in Somalia. And then there are the billions we have sent to Egypt -- about $75 billion so far -- a country whose people are more anti-American the more money we send, because that money is diverted for the Mubarak Family-and-Friends plan, just as so much is diverted by certain relatives of Karzai (oh, he knows nothing about it, he has no idea, he's above the fray, au-dessus de la melee). We provide the money that allows the corruption that causes the resentment that leads to more, not less support, for the (even) more fanatical Muslim groups such as Al Qaeda.
Stop the Jizyah, stop the waste, stop the squandering. Husband our resources. Wherever possible, let the pre-existing antagonisms within the Camp of Islam work their magic. The aggression and violence and natural misery of Muslim lands should be allowed to fester, and to be turned against not us, but Muslims themselves. Perhaps here and there an Ataturk, an analyzer of the effect of Islam, will arise and, using ruthless methods, will manage to systematically constrain Islam. Not likely, but not impossible. And in a few places -- such as Iran -- if the regime is humiliated, and loses face (damage to the nuclear project would do it, but in any case must be undertaken for other reasons), the thinking part of the population in Iran (and among Iranian exiles) has had a good dose of Islam, an overdose of Islam, and will long remember what an overdose of Islam can do to the system, of the nation, of the society, of the individual.
"Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money," said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee.
He'll take what we give and like it. If it weren't for us he'd be drowning in an acid bath or doing the same to someone else, so he can shut his trap.
We have a fundamental flaw in the way we carry out legal policy. Government almost always covers up for it's miscreant employees by providing free attorneys and paying off judgments rendered against those mopes. And the government never cross claims against them to recover taxpayer money from the real culprit. As a result there is little accountability. If the government went after its derelict employees and took away their homes and other personal assets there would be more vigilance. The statutes involving criminal negligence could be beefed up to permit prosecution of this kind of malfeasance along with a change in the sentencing guidlines which would enhance the penalty where the misdirected money went to our enemies.
As the late Senator Everett Dirksen opined:
"A billion here, a billion there...pretty soon you're talking REAL money."
The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It's cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose."
Now Iraq is going to demand that the Americans find another $8.7 billion to replace the "lost" funds which are carefully described as "Iraqi funds" and therefore not American money? But this distinction, after seven years of war, by which the Americans are going to be held accountable to Iraq when, after all, many tens of billions of dollars were lavished by the Americans on Iraqis, on projects in Iraq, on Iraqi contractors (many of whom merely absconded with the funds, or did substandard work and then demanded still more, and then again, produced substandard work -- just ask returning Civil Affairs Officers about what happened in Iraq).
The American government should refuse any further payments, of any kind, to Iraq. And it should further suggest that the Iraqis perhaps should reimburse the Americans -- now that the oil revenues are flowing, and Iraq will soon receive more than a hundred billion dollars a year, and more, because Iraq has the second or possibly the largest oil reserves in the world. They won't do it? Of course they won't. Let them try to get it.
And while we are at it, why have we not tried, if the Iraq business was so important to "stability in the region," to have Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait -- presumed beneficiaries of that "stability in the region" that the removal of Saddam Hussein, and the seven-year American effort, were intended to bring -- contribute, pony up, say, a few hundred billion dollars. If they don't? Oh, if they don't, then not only leave Iraq, but do everything possible to encourage the Shi'a and the Kurds to leave the Sunnis in the western desert, without any chance of sharing in the oil wealth. Let the Sunni Arabs of Iraq then go, with their own requests, to fellow Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait.
Pulling out is dumb as can be! Think before you write! Here we are with an army right in the middle of the Muslim breadbasket with a whole army and the on site warehouses to go with it - and an excuse to be there, and someones of us want to pull out? Crazy! Do they trust the Muslims to not use all those brain-washed Musbots not to rejoice and begin to seriously destroy all those filthy Christians and Jews and Pagans THAT POLLUTE THERE WHOLE PLANET? Look how well they do even now whilst they are getting bombed and secretly infiltrated while we have a huge army and navy and air-force right there in lands formally ruled by Mecca 100% instead of 25%? They want to withdraw all that security as if they didn't have a real good idea of what would happen? Give me a break! Leave our lovely troops right there where we are extremely lucky that they are there! Take them out and people will quiokly lose sight of what horrific danger all Muslims present to us civilized peoples, and they will quickly have us and the hearts of our youth - GET BACK TO REALITY WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED!
Henry, Iraq is just another muslim,"Heads we win, tails you lose," scenario. If we stay we are "occupiers" and they hate us. If we leave them to their own devices they hate us anyway.
We did their heavy-lifting for them; their bad-guy dictator, his rapacious offspring and the "Chemical Ali-types" are no more. All this at substantial cost of our own blood and treasure.
It's neither our obligation nor our business to "nation-build" for them or referee their internecine quarrels. If it's their desire to tear one another apart, then that's their choice, let them have at it.
By not knowing when to leave the party (and forgetting why we came) we have allowed Iraq and Afghanistan to become intractable quagmires. As another poster said a while back, "If they want to join the human race, they know where we can be reached." Meanwhile, let's get our folks out-of there, thank them for their service and deploy them along our southern border...
heck ya brother, continue to resist continue to fight
freedom by any means
never surrender
Dear George and RLTW, I don't care a toot about Nation Building - I just have one wish when it concerns Muslims and their fiendish Bible that loves Murder and slavery and near slavery more than life itself. I DON'T TRUST THEM AND I WILL PAY ANYTHING TO KEEP A WATCHFUL EYE ON THEM AND YOU CAN'T SEE THEM VERY GOOD FROM HALF WAY AROUND THE WORLD AND YOU CAN BET YOUR LIFE THAT SOON WE ARE GOING TO HAVE TO MOVE ALL OUR MILITARY EQUIPMENT BACK TO MUSLIM-LAND AGAIN IN ORDER TO SAFE GUARD OUR WONDERFUL WESTERN CIVILIZATION - ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ALL GET THE ATOMIC BOMBS THEY ARE LUSTING SO HARD FOR. But I love RLTW who said, in effect, "Two wrongs don't make a right but three left turns do!" So, what ever the justification, no matter how weak, let us keep a gigantic army right there in the middle of the most vicious and dangerous and insidious people that ever have lived on this planet!
As for the Atomic Bombs, it is a proven fact that Muslim Oil Bribe Money can buy anyone or anything without fail - how else do you explain why so many of our politicians love the 'Religion of Peace' - they are not stupid, they know it is certainly not a 'religion of peace'.
Henry, we don't disagree on trusting muslims--even muslims don't trust other muslims!
Your concern seems centered on nuclear capability. How can the presence of our conventional forces there prevent that? If anything, it places them in greater jeopardy unless we have on-site, ready-to-deploy nuclear-retaliatory assets there. (I wouldn't be against that, BTW, even with the WMD-irony
it would evoke)
Has the presence of our conventional force in Iraq in any way deterred the nuclear-development and sabre-rattling from Iran? Sorry, it doesn't look that way to me. Has it affected Erdogan's campaign for a re-islamized government in Turkey? I don't see that, either.
Look, let's keep a couple of hardened bases there with all our high-tech security and monitoring hardware deployed, as we did against the Soviets. And include an integrated rapid strike-force component that can react quickly to any threatening developments in the region.
What I'm suggesting is maximum security with mininmum involvement. Let the muslims settle their own differences. How is it in our interests to get in their way?
Henry the only way this might be workable is if we were able to have a militery base in Iraq. I think the Iraqis owe us at least that. They should also be made to pay us for this base. This base is going to be target number one for all the jihadis and al qaeda and Iran. They would dearly love to nuke this base. As you can see this base has to be well defended, guarded, and armed to the teeth. This base will be there primerly to watch the Iranian. We should call this the CARTER BASE, because it is that worthless president that made Iran what it is today, a despotic evil empire of hate and supporters of mass murder.
A bomb away!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNlnnIGhu10