It’s Nice to be Liked, But It’s Better By Far to be Paid
The Times has a good round-up of how the Iraqi economic stimulus is helping at home:
Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions — involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery — made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.Some of the cases involve people who are suspected of having mailed tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq, or of having stuffed the money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country, the federal investigators said.
I’m glad the CBO carefully scored the Iraqi reconstruction bills to show that they were deficit neutral and followed PAYGO rules, because imagine what would have happened if that spending were subject to the same lax oversight that dogs Medicare and Medicaid.
March 14, 2010 8:13 am
Posted in: General Stupidity, War
28 Comments
28 Responses
Mike Kay - March 14, 2010 | 8:18 am · Link
I love the smell of nation building in the morning.
Svensker - March 14, 2010 | 8:25 am · Link
I’m sure Hannity, Rush, Beck, et al, will be all over this. Real soon.
Michael - March 14, 2010 | 8:33 am · Link
Why do you want the terrorists to win? Reporting on this clearly exposes your Hate America agenda.
Bill E Pilgrim - March 14, 2010 | 8:42 am · Link
Anybody know how to use Adobe Audition?
A bit random, I realize, for a Sunday morning.
Except it’s not morning here and it’s driving me nuts.
Everything seems okay except it won’t playback any midi input from this keyboard I just bought. Just trying Audition for the first time, but if I can’t do that with it, it’s sort of lost the whole point.
Must be missing something but I can’t figure out what.
Gray here too. Up to the 40s though, woo hoo.
Bill E Pilgrim - March 14, 2010 | 8:48 am · Link
Oops wrong thread.
El Cid - March 14, 2010 | 8:50 am · Link
This is all the result of having let Obama and the Democrats decide to occupy Iraq, after Bush Jr. had totally saved us from imminent Iraqi attack and/or subversion and who had totally set Iraq on an awesome path to stability and democracy and no ethnic cleansing whatsoever, and then when ACORN and Barney Frank and Fannie & Freddie took over Iraq it suddenly became a big mess because Obama’s Kenyan relatives love corruption and hate America.
Linda Featheringill - March 14, 2010 | 8:51 am · Link
Good morning.
Yeah, it is gray in Cleveland, too. Nasty day yesterday – 38 degrees and a fine misty rain all day.
However, if the temp had been just a little less, it would have snowed like crazy all day. So I guess we were lucky.
Some people think that today’s wars are fought in order to further enrich certain classes of people. I wonder where they got that idea? Crazy.
Emma - March 14, 2010 | 9:23 am · Link
Color me unsurprised…. and it’s a beautiful morning in South Florida and I’m at work… bah, humbug.
rootless-e - March 14, 2010 | 9:25 am · Link
Dude, if the free market thought we needed accounting controls, it would have brought them into being. You nanny-state socialists want to supervise every transaction. If Jack has has a suitcase of Iraq reconstruction cash and wants to trade it with Jill for face surgery, a new identity card, and an account in Lichtenstein, the last thing the two of them need for their mutually enriching transaction is some Marxist busybody bringing in the stormtroopers of the IRS.
Linda Featheringill - March 14, 2010 | 9:26 am · Link
To Emma:
My sympathies. I, too, am working.
You know, you and I both are much too young and beautiful to have to work for a living. This is all so unfair!
Cat Lady - March 14, 2010 | 9:32 am · Link
Heckuva job Bushie.
Jake - March 14, 2010 | 9:36 am · Link
Again, how is Dan Senor financing his possible Senate campaign? Someone should check his sock drawer.
AhabTRuler - March 14, 2010 | 9:36 am · Link
To be fair, it was a group effort.
kay - March 14, 2010 | 9:45 am · Link
@Jake:
That’s who I thought of, immediately.
Those heady nation-building days ….big piles of cash disappearing.
I don’t know why they were handing out cash to US contractors, anyway. It seems like a no-brainer to set up some sort of redeemable note system, where the the contractor extends credit to the US. They’d need a paper ledger and a pen.
El Cid - March 14, 2010 | 9:59 am · Link
@kay:
Easily vanishing assets were a feature of Bush Jr. era rule, not a bug.
kommrade reproductive vigor - March 14, 2010 | 10:10 am · Link
They just wanted to take their footballs made out of $100 bills home. You know, as a souvenir.
KCinDC - March 14, 2010 | 10:11 am · Link
No one could have anticipated that if we shipped pallets containing millions of $100 bills over to Iraq it would have been used for anything other than rebuilding Iraq, and in the most efficient manner possible.
cleek - March 14, 2010 | 10:20 am · Link
FYI, here’s that song before Liz was big.
hurts like shit and it feels like America.
Mike in NC - March 14, 2010 | 10:21 am · Link
This event will go down as the biggest boondoggle in the history of the world. Have they replaced one of those giant Saddam statues that dot Baghdad with one of Dubya shoveling money into a boottomless pit? I knew of several people who scooted off to Iraq when the contracts were being awarded. All they could talk about were the tax-free six figure salaries they were going to get.
SGEW - March 14, 2010 | 10:44 am · Link
@Mike in NC:
I don’t know, I still feel that Cortez takes the cake on that one.
mistermix - March 14, 2010 | 10:45 am · Link
@cleek: I thought the whole song was pretty appropriate to this post…
Biscuits - March 14, 2010 | 10:52 am · Link
Huge piles of cash missing and ammunition depots looted. That wont end badly.
Bootlegger - March 14, 2010 | 10:59 am · Link
@SGEW: For pure waste of blood and treasure followed by centuries of open conflict you can’t beat the Crusades.
WereBear - March 14, 2010 | 10:59 am · Link
@SGEW: Yeah, but competing with Cortez… that’s world class exploitation and corruption, no matter how it’s sliced.
Nice to hear about this on the same morning my mother told me she can’t keep up with everything; she’s got to phase out the foster care, let the underwater house go, and move into a senior housing arrangement.
She can keep the dog, but the cockatoo must find a new home. Anyone want a nice cockatoo? She raised him from an egg.
SGEW - March 14, 2010 | 11:09 am · Link
I guess it all comes down to how you define “boondoggle.” [Looks it up, definition #2: “a wasteful or impractical project or activity often involving graft.”] Oh.
Therefore, I humbly retract my Cortez suggestion (which was more along the lines of a “monstrous scam” or “ghastly trick” than “boondoggle,” I suppose), and humbly agree with Mike in NC’s very precise observation.
Emma - March 14, 2010 | 11:18 am · Link
Linda: You know, you and I both are much too young and beautiful. For myself, I feel like quoting Lieutenant Uhura: sorry, neither.
But it is unfair!
M. Carey - March 14, 2010 | 12:51 pm · Link
Remember the bags of cash, reported during the first months of the invasion. That was a VERY successful operation for Roves buddies.
Mark - March 14, 2010 | 2:58 pm · Link
Whataya mean nobody could’ve predicted it. 1999’s “Three Kings” predicted it.