Nouri al-Maliki’s Retirement Fund?
All this talk about Hosni Mubarak’s looted billions must really piss off our other client rulers, the ones who have not yet set aside such rich stashes for their retirement.
But someone in Iraq has already made the move, disappearing $40 billion from Iraq’s development fund.
Around $40 billion are “missing” from a post-Gulf War fund that Iraq maintains to protect the money from foreign claims, its parliamentary speaker said on Monday.”There is missing money, we do not know where it has gone,” Osama al-Nujaifi said at a news conference in Baghdad. “The money is around $40 billion in total.”
[snip]
Nujaifi did not say when or how the discovery had been made regarding the missing money. He said two investigative committees had been formed to track down the cash.
But then, why should Iraq be any different from Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzi’s cronies have been looting the country since they got into power?
I’m so glad we’ve decided to spend trillions on our imperial wars rather than funding teachers and roads. The money is going to such a good cause, don’t you think?
We storm into countries where power is obtained and held by guns and cronyism, drop a huge pile of U.S. dollars without much in the way of audited control, and are *surprised*! when our puppets steal the money?
Silly rabbits! Tricks are for warlords!
MuBarack Obama is spending money in the Homeland. He is creating jobs for the Empire. He could be spending money to fight diseases. But, instead the neo-con secret Goldman Sachs government demands we create more diseases. Manhattan Kansas will get $600 million for more Bio weapons of Mass Destruction.
You can never have to much weaponized Anthrax for False Flag attacks, or too much weaponized
Should we depend on the FDA to protect us? No. My favorite on the list is “Classical” H1N1.
FDA and EPA need to be cut. Let the Free Hand of The Rush Limbaugh Market protect consumers. Companies can’t make bad products because consumers won’t consume them. Unless they already consumed them and the contractor gets paid for making bad products. Then the pollutant byproducts can be cleaned up at taxpayer expense, or the pollutants can remain because the earth cleans itself. Humans, plants and animals make good filters. Tax Cuts Create Jobs.
“Someday this empire will end….”
http://youtu.be/sBksHaTQCbU
This is an amazing excerpt from a film by Penny Allen called “The Soldier’s Tale” that affords a glimpse into some of the individual psychology that underpins war. The accompanying text is a serviceable translation from French into English.
Thanks for the link!
Off topic but what the fuck?
From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…
GHW Bush’s New World Order indicates that Domestic Austerity Measures are needed so that Client Rulers can get their fair share of American billions.
If Americans know it’s for a good cause, we are willing to tighten our belts.
We’ve done it before and we can do it again. That’s the American Can-Do Spirit of Shared Sacrifice to Whip Inflation Now! Just Say No! Cut Taxes For The Richest among us! Gut Public Education! Privatize Everything! Win The Future!
Obama is basically a good guy who’s hands are tied! – Alterman
Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here! In the form of a Mushroom Cloud. No one could have predicted that airplanes could be flown into buildings.
How do you lose 40,000,000,000 dollars? Was this money stacked up in cash in a hangar? Or was it an entry on some balance sheet attached to some bank account?
This is BS.
What’s worse is that it’s our tax money. Oops! Sorry everybody! It’s time for shared sacrifice, (except for the top 2% of course), because we did shit like give Iraq 40 billion fucking dollars which they promptly “lost”.
The Pentagon lost many billions early in the war. They didn’t know what had happened to it. Oh well.
Social Security needs cutting. Obama, a good guy at heart, has decidedly ratfucked the elderly for two years now with no Cost Of Living Allowance for Social Security with further Austerity Measures pending.
America – Best Bootstraps Nation in the World.
Now Margaret, there you go again, adding to deficit hysteria. (s)
Someone should ask for a specific investigation of just how much money that son-of-a-bitch Chalabi bilked us out of with George Bush and the republican’s blessings.
Chalabi is a friend because he hates Iran.
And he doesn’t hate us for our freedom….
That’s worth a billion right there.
At least.
“The Iraqis should be grateful to us.” George W. Bush.
Like Wall St., I presume
Last time they lost money like that, it was the several-billion-dollars on pallets. Which have never been accounted for, and have very thoroughly been disappeared.
What else is new? Back in the heyday of Wild, wild, West, “contracting”, (and it aint over yet…) there were palletsful of bricks of $100 bills disappearing after being flown into our hoped-for 51st state by a CentCom C-130.
Yeah, they don’t use C-130s much anymore. C-5s and C-17s hold a lot more money than a Hercules.
Speaking of funding wars: The total cost of WWII would have been sufficient to pay for all the following: A $16,000 house for every family in the US, Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal; A $10,000,000 library for every city of 200,000 inhabitants and over in the US, Britain, and Russia; A $50,000,000 university for each of these cities; A $2,000 automobile for every family in the US, Britain, France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway; The salaries of 100,000 teachers and an equal number of nurses for 100 years; A free college education for every boy and girl in the US from 17 to 21 years of age.
It all comes down to the price and availability of gasoline.
Heated argument with some friends in Charleston, S.C. this weekend.
They were hard at work inflating the deficit fear-doll when I told them that until they wanted to talk about that $3.5 bil a week being pissed down the clusterfuck urinal for lo, these many years, they had the credibility of Pastor Ted lecturing his flock about the evils of homosexuality, just hours away from snorting coke off some gay hooker’s ass.
No more nice invitations to genteel Charleston luncheons for TB, I fear.
(Fart; moan; ballscratch; yawn….)
At least the Icelanders have their priorities straight. Another fun fact: “Daley, Chief Of Staff, Earned $8.7 Million From JPMorgan Last Year” (Feb. 21, 2011). The recent G20 was a joke.
“Daley, Chief of Staff, earned $8.7 million from JP Morgan last year.”
I mean!
Jesus, if you’re a republican and see that, you’ve got to think:
“God’s in his heaven; Obama’s in the White House, and all is well…”
Too busy gorging at the trough means you’re not prepared for even the most immediate future.
Some perceive the Easter Bunny, while Critics can be so critical, uncivil, and just be plain ol doggone meanies! The dude earned the money by working for it!
Tax Cuts mean that workers can keep more of their own money in their pockets. – Dubya Bush. Is our children learning?
It’s called K Street (walking distance from the White House just north of Penn. Ave. NW).
K Street…
K..does that stand for Kabuki Street,by any chance?
http://www.ipsn.org/santos1.html
That was in 1997 of course Miram was gotten rid of by Daley. Today however
http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/blog/detail/daley-talks-il-police-and-firefighter-pension-crisis
http://dupagegop.com/democrat-corruption/507–feds-probe-daley-nephews-city-pension-deal
Its no wonder Daley has not openly endorsed Rahm.
Bush with deregulation no strings on the cash lost us 40 billion? Fine then the rich who almost to a man support deregulation need to cough up that cash. An FDR 90% tax on income and or an asset tax would work.
Bush proved with 8 years of real world example that tax cuts for the rich don’t help the economy and create jobs. Obama has proved its been about 2 years how long should we wait for jobs that restoring the banks so they can provide credit does not create jobs.
At least not in America however the Bush/Obama economic policy has resulted in lower wages world wide, higher food and fuel prices and revolts.
People need food they need good jobs to get married Parasites who get greedy and kill their host before the host can reproduce don’t survive long.
I think Bush/Obama parasite politics are getting closer to the kill the host tipping point.
“…are getting closer to the kill-the-host tipping point…”
I think you put your finger on it, Things. The one consolation from Obama’s miraculous rehab on the GOP, is that they are using the new life to fuck things up even worse (see: Walker with his dick in the cheese machine…) and just maybe, the next democrat, we’ll get a prez who will come in with fire in his eye and courage in his heart.
Citizens United, Kochs and the MIC will ensure another Clinton, Kerry, Gore or Lieberman. Anybody with any principles will either check them at the door or end up like a Kennedy.
democracy is messy. we know where they are. sadam is seeking quantities of uranium in Niger.
oil wells, pipelines not metered until last year, wonder how much of that got stolen , and by whom
40 billion missing, add it to the twelve billion cash that disappeared, flown over their to be handed out.’
fifty billion dollars missing
one million orphans
Obama, “the surge worked”
those savvy businessmen.
must share the sacrifice
USA USA USA
pissed away.
David Dayen has a fresh cross-post already in progress: Bahrain/Libya Update
Obama: “The surge worked.”
Well hell, it DID!
Bush and his coterie of wizards got out of town and dropped the pinless hand grenade right into O.’s lap.
Anybody think he can find the pin and stick it back in, in time to stay with his exit schedule of us out of Iraq by the end of the year?
I didn’t think so.
First the surge…now comes the purge !!
http://www.chipabf.org/6investments/documents/Q310_Fees_Conditions.pdf
Sure sounds like pay to play to me why would Daley get a job at JP Morgan or anywhere else unless he had Chicago cash backing him?
He worked his way up with hard work? Bwahahaha!
He got a job based on his great grades at school? Bwahahaha! ( given his brother’s record thats doubtful he took the bar exam several times).
He’s such a great money manager…JP morgan got bank bailout cash nobody at the firm is a great money manager!