little real attention has been payed to the admission by US Witnesses who appeared before the legislature to testify about the mis-use of funds in Iraq.
The talking points being used to counter this are pretty lame at best-
"dragging up old history"- "trying to make the Republicans 'look' bad"-
What
about the missing funds?
What have they been used on?
Why did no one think it was important to be sure that the money didn't end up in the wrong hands? We had time to sling ropes around Saddam's statues, time to loot his palaces, but no time to distribute millions upon millions of dollars without accountability????
Tell me this- was a stained blue dress not "dragging up old history"?
was the Republican dominated legislature not trying to make Democrats look bad?
is it only "wrong" when
they do it?
are the American people this apathetic, or impotent?
Some of those recipients of American cash, however, were likely "ghost employees," or figments created by Iraqi handlers who pocketed the money, Bremer acknowledged under questioning by Welch.
Bowen cited one example of ghost employees: One ministry reported having 8,206 guards on the payroll, but Bowen's investigation found it had only 602.
He said the CPA was aware of such deceit but continued paying "to keep the peace."
In a telephone interview after the hearing, Welch said the session shows the Bush administration relied on "Alice in Wonderland accounting."
"They had no plan," he added. "They were completely clueless. The chaos they spoke about on the ground was matched by the chaos in their own efforts."
http://www.benningtonbanner.com/headlines/ci_5173958 The "chaos on the ground" is also carelessly being financed by "ghost employees" and improper oversight of the 12BILLION dollars in cash that was sent to Iraq.
So.... who shall 'we' target for being complicit in "providing financial aid to the insurgents"????
Shall we begin with Bremmer and work our way up? He accepted responsibility in his testimony the other day.
Many people have been "dealt with" by the US with less concrete evidence of their complicity in funding terrorists than this.
Case in point
The killing of an American citizen by an unmarked US drone in Yemen -
The CIA operation that killed Derwish, al-Harithi and the others operated under a set of highly classified rules derived from a "presidential finding" approved by President Bush and vetted by White House, CIA and State Department lawyers.
The operation had its own "rules of engagement" that described which individuals could be targeted. U.S. officials assert that the men were enemy "combatants" in the U.S.-led global war on terrorism, which unlike any other conflict cannot be defined by national boundaries. Some scholars of constitutional and international laws have raised questions about these rules and charged that the killings do not fall within known legal bounds.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30332-2002Nov8¬Found=true Why are the Republics suddenly so dis- interested in following the 'money'?
Is it really because it isn't from strictly "American interests"- ???
Or because the trail leads places they don't want anyone going?