by Jack
About 9 years there was a big news story about billions of US dollars shipped to Iraq that went missing. The story came light around 2005 and since then the exact dollar amount and the rumors of what happened have grown. Many now say it was between $200-300 billion, in fact I heard this story last night on George Noory’s Coast to Coast radio show. But, what really happened and how much was it? Was this the largest heist in history? Noory’s program is known for spreading some pretty wild rumors as Noory plays the part of a totally gullable host, ready to believe anything from space alien abductions to 9/11 conspiracies. But, this time I decided to check out the story because I heard about it many times before.
One of the more persistent rumors goes like this, several Iraqi officials managed to grab some of money, around $2bn, and they smuggled the loot out of the country, only to be hidden somewhere inside Lebanon. This one might be true too, but I explain in just a minute.
The money in question actually belonged to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but when sanctions were imposed the money in US banks was seized and it was not released until the war was over. The money, all 6.6 billion, was shrink wrapped, placed on pallets and was shipped out of the US on two large military transport aircraft to Baghdad. Once there the story of what happened next gets a little murky mainly because of the chaos during the change from an interim government administered by the US and coalition forces to the newly elected Iraqi government.
Many months after the transfer questions surfaced about what happened to all that cash? There were more questions than answers. Nobody seemed to know for sure or if they did know they weren’t talking. There came a time when the Iraqi government was demanding the US find the missing money or replace it. Congress was frantic and held special inquiries. Paul Bremer, who headed the temporary Iraqi government testified before Congress as did many others. Government officials were not happy about the prospect of being forced to replaced the billions of Iraq’s money with US taxpayers dollars.
So what really happened? In 2011 evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR.
The report details the transfer of cash from the U.S. to the Central Bank of Iraq. Much of it was originally assets of Iraq, some was part of the Oil for Food program imposed during the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and some was funneled through the United Nations for relief and reconstruction projects, according to the report.
The report focuses on money left over from shipments of more than $10 billion in U.S. currency shipped to Iraq – much of it in shrink-wrapped bricks of hundred dollars bills – and the $6.6 billion remaining when the temporary overseer of Iraq, the Coalitional Provisional Authority, went out of business in the summer of 2004 with the creation of a new Iraqi government.
Earlier, the money had seemed to be missing. The inspector general himself, Stuart Bowen, said flatly in June, “It has not been properly accounted for.”
The official accounting had used more bland language. “SIGIR concluded that weaknesses in DoD’s financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for and articulate the disposition of remaining DFI (Development Fund for Iraq) funds,” a 2010 report said.
As Paul Harvey would say, “and now you know the rest of the story.”
We should have held onto the 6.6 billion, considered it forfeit, and invested every single penny of it for aid to American Military veterans and particularly those severely injured and the families of the injured and dead.
The bigger part of this scandal was the Oil for Food scandal. See links to several articles here.
A single excerpt raises eyebrows:
Another article, no longer available, explored the money funneled to terrorists by Saddam.
The UN isn’t the lovely organization once envisioned, it’s corrupt and filled with anti-freedom nuts. I think we should ship it off to another country and let them handle the traffic and parking problems…not to mention the financing. Most of the members vote against US interests anyway.
Conservative Treehouse has posted an extensive brief on benghazi for anyone interested. I bring it up here becasue in the authors notes at the end was this:
Billion here, billion there, pretty soon we’re talking real money. And despite this the left consistently promotes big government and the big government price tag with nary a thought or question.