Posted by Tina
Holy guacamole…but are we surprised?
A report out of the Pentagon shows that the U.S. government has given over $150 million to groups that fund terror attacks in Afghanistan.
The reports on ABC interviews with Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat, New Hampshire and Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction John Sopko:
‘It’s like the United States government subsidizing the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, those groups that are trying to shoot and kill our soldiers,’ New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen told ABC News.
Forty three companies are involved with ties to the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Haqqani network. Bureaucratic red tape so far has prevented the U.S. from pulling the funds.
‘The reason they’ve given us is that it’s not fair to these contractors that the evidence that we’ve presented, and this is evidence collected by the United States government, is classified,’ said Special Inspector General John Sopko.
‘That’s the absurdity of it. We can probably attack them via drone on Monday and we’ll issue them a contract on Tuesday,’ the told ABC News.
Wasting our hard earned money is bad enough. But giving it to our enemies? How nuts is that!
Why is this such a big deal all of a sudden? We’ve been paying bribes to the Taliban from day one.
We’ve never had the troop strength to actually lock down the country, and the Taliban was and is, indeed, amenable to bribery.
The thinking is that if you can keep things quite long enough to get the infrastructure in, the locals would rouse themselves to defend said infrastructure.
I doubt very much that this will prove to be the case … but maybe I’ll be surprised.
What?
Such generous understanding was not forthcoming when GW Bush was building schools in Iraq!
Where is your outrage over useless war spending?
Besides I simply posted an article. The article features a Democrat politician and a bureaucrat in charge of oversight. Both seem to be making it a very “big deal”. The bureaucrat’s take is particularly of interest:
It’s sickeningly amusing since Obama is said to have bragged about being particularly good at killing people:
The so called party of peace happily redistributes to enemies that vow to murder Americans and destroy our way of life…nice.
And I thought the post reeked of a sardonic weariness.
This is the norm. The banks always fund both sides of a war as shown throughout history even before there was paper money. The history of corporations and Foundations and the rulers of a country or shall we say the world has only changed in logistics.
Go Back into history especially when the 1st central bank was created.
All this hate the Liberal stuff devised for tea party Politics is to divide and conquer. Ya really believe president has any power? Really?
Audit the Fed, Audit the pentagon, Repeal Citizens United or loose democracy forever.
Now they want Obama to pay his election dues by allowing the TPP. The TPP changes the sovernighty of this nation or shall I say nullify it to a world court ran by corporations.
How hard is it to pay attention to the real issues and tell the media to take a hike!
How hard is it to tell he foreign and domestic money that they can not choose our next candidates? How hard is it to see a rich congress with inherited wealth and company’s, will not care about the majority of citizens?
This is not about republicans and democrats this is all about the majority and the privileged elected by 1% money.
LOL they made a deal many years ago with the nutjobs and California is responsible for much of it. LOL Old white men think slavery just means blacks? No it is by class.
Maybe a read of the original Charles Dickens A Christmas carol would be a nice holiday read.
There are people in debtors prison in Illinois? Against the law unless they sign a failure to appear when no papers were ever served! Just a forged doc. And what you come out owing thousands to the prison company!
http://qctimes.com/news/local/illinois-house-oks-plan-to-stop-debtors-prison/article_430dc1d8-7a08-11e1-878b-0019bb2963f4.html
The Banks own many institutions through blind trusts.
I lay money on if we audit the Fed we are not happy with the truth and that may very well include why people on the ground during 911 said 2nd plane was military
American or not? Let’s get the job done. The answers get people killed. Who really runs this country? I mean Remember Prescott Bush? Just one of many that encompasses both political parties.
Add to this the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services unlawfully handing out nearly $129 million in free medical services and prescription medications to “unlawfully present” individuals (translate that PC government-speak to “illegal aliens”) and soon you are talking real money.
Libby, as is her want, may carp all she like, I question the wisdom of such handouts, legal as in the case of misplaced foreign aid, or illegal as in the case of the CMS.
http://www.examiner.com/article/obamacare-for-illegal-aliens-hhs-provides-free-medication-to-lawbreakers
Off subject but worthy of note, Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter on Twitter) hits another grand slam in her November 13, 2013 column.
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-11-13.html
Pie I understand this is another aspect of O’bummer care that illustrates how socialists never consider the cost side of the ledger and never think their feel good ideas through. Just think, some of those illegal (double) crossers could be al Qaeda.
They call the Republicans the stupid party and I guess its true in that they are never ready for the double crossing dirty trickster Dems. However, when it comes to protecting Americans, and our hard earned money, the Democrats can’t be beat in the stupid department.
As you may recall in 2003 – 2004 during the Iraq war, we were shipping BILLIONS of dollars in CASH to the war zone. Most of it somehow vanished!
No one really knows how many US Dollars were lost, but the estimates are between $6 to $18 BILLION.
Doesn’t that make you glad to be a taxpayer.
Not really, and I’ve heard that same story, but was it really true? IF it was true why was there no follow up and criminal charges brought, surely we must a couple of honest Congressman and Senators, right?
The HuffPo, not my first choice as hard news source, is nonetheless informative. From 10/11:
As the decade-long Iraq conflict finally comes to close, so too does the mystery of a stockpile of American cash worth billions lost during the war.
Almost all of the nearly $6.6 billion worth of U.S. currency that went missing in the early days of the Iraq conflict has now been accounted for, according to a new report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, cited by CNN.
In 2004, between $10 billion to $20 billion worth of cash — depending on reports — was air-shipped to Iraq. The money was made up largely of Iraq’s own assets and intended to finance reconstruction projects, CNN reports. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times reported that the government had accounted for almost all of these funds, except for $6 billion that was thought to have disappeared.
“[It may be] the largest theft of funds in national history,” Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told the LA Times at the time.
As it turns out, the money ended up exactly where it was supposed to. Most of it was handed over to the Central Bank of Iraq, following the dissolution of the U.S. temporary government in 2004, CNN reports. The rest, around $217 million, was stored in a presidential palace vault and doled out in parcels to fund various projects.
The recovery of the funds is no doubt a relief for the Department of Defense, but the sum is a mere pittance compared to the total cost of the conflict.
According to the National Priorities Project’s CostOfWar.com, a website providing a running tally of the expense incurred by U.S. wars, the cost of the Iraq conflict is now nearly $801 billion. However, when medical and disability claims are included, as well as the cost of replacing equipment and weapons, economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes estimate the eventual cost of the war could be between $4 and $6 trillion, The Christian Science Monitor reports.
Some of these funds include $20 billion spent annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to NPR. In addition, a recent report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting estimates that between $31 and $60 billion may have been lost to waste and fraud thanks to “poor planning and payoffs” over the last decade in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Indeed, as the U.S. prepares to withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of the year millions more in military funds are expected to go to waste. Faced with little alternative due to shipping costs, the U.S. military has already given away $250 million worth of equipment to the Iraqi government, including everything from tanks to office supplies. As entire bases that cost billions to construct are turned over to Iraqi hands, the tally is only expected to increase over the coming months.
“Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.”
Yes it’s true. Rep. Henry Waxman led the investigation. He got nowhere.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/13/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613
The Iraq central bank money that Libby is talking about is a separate issue. I know where some of that money went. I have a 25 Dinar note (with Saddam Hussen’s) picture on it, up on my office wall. It was given to me by a US soldier stationed in Iraq who stole it and brought it back here.
There is no question that some funds were lost. Any operation of this size probably involves losses…especially when government is the accountant. There are no charges of funds purposely going to groups that supported the enemy under Bush, to my knowledge.
It’s no consolation that the Obama administration, with Hillary and now Kerry as Secretary of State, made matters worse by turning it’s back on Iraq, insulting the former administrations efforts in the process and therefore insulting the leadership in Iraq that risked life and limb to make elections and the formation of a parliamentary government possible. He might as well have thrown every dime we invested in Iraq to Iran…another idiocy we have yet to discuss.
“The Iraq central bank money that Libby is talking about is a separate issue.”
No, it mentions both. Most of the airlifted $20B in cash was Iraqi, but the $6B was ours.
Turning it’s back on Iraq? iraq told us to get out!
Iraq ? Who is paying for the phony profit war? Americans are tired of the GOP’s wars for profit and so is the rest of the world.
Worse yet what is GW doing tonite? Oh speaking at a Jews for Jesus fundraiser! cause if ya turn Jews into Christians the second cumming will happen! LOL bad move for an ex President GW LOL
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/religion/christianity/george-w-bush-speak-jews-jesus-fundraiser#
Small groups of people trying to tell the whole world how to live is the reason for real wars……..”My way is the Only way” is not Democracy
Epic Fail!
Tina: “It’s no consolation that the Obama administration, with Hillary and now Kerry as Secretary of State, made matters worse by turning it’s back on Iraq,”
That’s just not what happened, and you know it. I don’t always agree with Dewey, but he is right that Iraq told us to get out. Obama wanted to keep us there longer. Iraq wouldn’t let us.* Would it have helped relations with the new government if we had stayed on anyway, basically acting as an occupied power?
*These are well-known facts, but I know that means nothing on this website. You are at this very moment sitting there and pretending that Iran-Contra never happened and that this picture doesn’t exist, so it’s obviously not a stretch for you to pretend that Iraq was just begging for American troops to stay forever.
https://www.google.com/search?q=rumsfeld+saddam+photo&rlz=1C1TSNP_enUS487US487&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=OLOFUtaoO6mZiALM94DgCw&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1517&bih=741#facrc=_&imgrc=1cvOh7_n-bpcEM%3A%3BHhUOtZLGOhG5dM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww2.gwu.edu%252F~nsarchiv%252FNSAEBB%252FNSAEBB82%252Fhandshake300.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww2.gwu.edu%252F~nsarchiv%252FNSAEBB%252FNSAEBB82%252F%3B300%3B200
Chris: “That’s just not what happened, and you know it. I don’t always agree with Dewey, but he is right that Iraq told us to get out. Obama wanted to keep us there longer. Iraq wouldn’t let us.”
“They wouldn’t let us” is not an excuse for not continuing to have diplomatic relations and negotiate…Obama just walked away…okay, your call, not my problem. (No leadership)
But this isn’t just my opinion. Powerline posted an opinion piece buy the Washington Post Editorial Board:
Powerline went on to add:
A recent post in The Hill demonstrates the possible reason for Obama’s indifference, or whatever it is, in Iraq. It is troubling:
We will never know how the ME would look today had we elected a better leader five years ago…someone with experience who was prepared for this incredibly difficult job. But what is certain is that the ME under the lack of leadership by this administration, including Hillary, is terrible…the situation is very dangerous. I am again dismayed at the flip flopping stance that America takes because of change in Presidents when it comes to foreign affairs. Carter gave us Iran…and now because we have not followed through Iraq and many other countries are in worse shape. Our allies in the region are looking to Iran and Russia.
“Would it have helped relations with the new government if we had stayed on anyway, basically acting as an occupied power?”
Germany, once under the boot of Hitler remains a free democratic country today we have been there since the war ended. Japan also had American support after the war. It isn’t occupation, Chris. We had no intention of ruling over the country which is why we did so much to help them establish a parliamentary (their choice) government. America has always acted as a liberator…not an occupier. We do it because we love freedom and we believe all people down underneath all of the worldly circumstances of their lives long to be free. We also have experience d that free people don’t go to war with one another. War is always waged by supremacists and overlords…tyrants with dreams of power and control. So yes. I think a strong leader could have negotiated terms to stay in Iraq and if not at least kept the lines open so that when the trouble started they still would think of us as an ally, if not a friend. Our troops bled to free Iraq. I think it is shameful that extremists on the left could not (would not for their own selfish reasons) see it this way.
Tina gets it, Chris and Dewey — of course — do not. Obama abandoned Iraq and the world will eventually have to pay for that.
Maintaining a diplomatic and military presence in a country we have defeated in war does not constitute occupation, imperialism, or domination. Japan or Germany or Italy is a satellite state?
The lunatics have taken over the progressive asylum. In a sense I welcome that. They are their own worst enemies.