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05.07 YouthWorks Campaign Needs Support for Summer Jobs
05.14 George W. Bush’s Other Undeclared War: NCLB
05.13 New Buchanan Book: Anglo-American Ascendancy Lost in Unnecessary Wars
04.30 A Litany of Horrors
04.17 Peter Hallward's "Damming the Flood" (Part II)
Ref. : Letters to the editor
05.12 The World above 350 ppm CO2
04.28 Green Scare State Terrorism
04.21 Hunger Plagues Haiti and the World
04.16 WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
Ref. : Single-Payer FAQ
Ref. : Environmental Health News
Ref. : Sundance Channel's THE GREEN
Ref. : What is Global Warming, and what can citizens do about it?
Ref. : Global Warming Links
Ref. : Health & Nutrition Links
05.06 US Media Trivializes Campaign 2008
05.06 Death's Factotum: Michael Gordon and the Times Pour Pentagon Poison into Nation's Ear
05.05 TV News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits
05.05 Color-Coded: Jeremiah Wright and the Real Deal on Race
05.02 The Right's America-Hating Preacher
04.23 Pentagon Pundits
04.22 US News Media's Latest Disgrace
04.18 ABC's Debate Debacle
04.16 Reprising the Genocidal Fury of Thomas Friedman
05.14 Bush Operative Pushes Voter-ID Law
05.13 Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the "Stupid" Vote
05.13 McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
05.09 The Democratic Presidential Race: A View from Pennsylvania
05.08 Serving the System: Corporate Control of U.S. Would Continue Under Obama
05.06 A Republican for Barack
05.05 Thinking About Voter Registrations
05.05 'Beware the Terrible Simplifiers'
05.01 U.S. Military Coordinated Day Of Prayer Events With Christian Right Group
04.30 John McCain Won’t Be Looking for the Union Label
04.30 Put Him Out With the Pastor!
04.25 Clinton Courted Racists in the Pennsylvania Primary
04.24 Groundbreaking Book Documents Widespread Election Fraud; Warns Elections Vulnerable to Theft
04.24 Triviamongering in the U.S. presidential race
04.24 Campaign 1988 Lives!
04.23 Hillary Clinton's Monstrous Threat
04.21 Brilliant Disguise: Bush Torture, Obama and The Boss
04.19 The Clintons, Triangulating with China
04.18 American Hegemony Is Not Guaranteed
04.18 Are the Clintons Playing Joe McCarthy?
04.17 The Weather Underground 'Theme'
05.14 Falling Cedars: Fomenting War in Lebanon -- and Beyond
05.12 Armed Truce: Surging Into Slaughter on Sadr City's Jerusalem Street
05.10 Lost E-Mails Obscure 'Plame-gate'
05.09 Fallujah Revisited: Bush, Petraeus Prepare 'Cleansing' of Sadr City
05.09 Shoot, Kill, Lie, Repeat: America's New Moral Universe
05.07 Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia
05.05 The Terror Master: Bush Orders Covert 'Surge' Against Iran, with Dem Support
05.01 American and Israeli War Crimes: Same Atrocities, Different Responses
04.30 Halliburton Bribe Case Haunts Cheney
04.29 Getting Over Scalia
04.29 The Iraq War Morphs Into The Iranian War
04.28 The Torture Election
04.28 The Clock is Ticking for A US Attack on Iran
04.28 The Bush Team's Geneva Hypocrisy
04.25 New Terror War Atrocity: Beheading the Innocent for Bush in Somalia
04.23 Glorious Fruits of the War for Civilization
04.22 VA Tried to Conceal Extent of Attempted Veteran Suicides, Email Shows
04.21 What About the War, Benedict?
04.18 Updating Sami Al-Arian - His Ordeal Continues
04.16 Would Obama Hold Bush Accountable?
05.12 Thinking About Strategies
05.08 Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower
04.28 Thinking About Subtleties
04.23 The Oil Vice
04.22 The US Economy and the Costs of War
04.21 Thinking About Shakiness
05.12 Disturbing Stirrings - Ratcheting Up For War on Iran
05.05 Sixty Years of Palestinian Displacement, Occupation and Suffering
05.02 Feeding Moloch: Last Barriers to War on Iran Come Down
05.01 The Iranian Chessboard
05.01 Blood Diamonds, Blood Oil and Blood Food
05.01 Denying Palestinians Free Movement in the West Bank
04.30 The Ignored Lessons on the Stupidity of War
04.24 Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Speak
04.23 What the Iraq War is about
COMMENTARY:
The Case of the Missing $21 Billion
Who's Following the Iraq Money?
Well, there is a lot of money to follow in the current scandal that can be best described as the Bush/Cheney administration, and so far, nobody's doing it.
My bet for the place that needs the most following is the more than $9 billion that has gone missing without a trace in Iraq--as well as $12 billion in cash that the Pentagon flew into Iraq straight from Federal Reserve vaults via military transports, and for which there has been little or no accounting.
When the Coalition Provisional Authority was terminated in late 2004, with corruption still rampant and growing, Congress redefined Bowen's position as Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
Bowen, went to work. He uncovered some corruption in a report in early 2006 that sounded scathing enough. Bowen found cases of double billing by contractors, of payments for work that was never done, and other scandals. But he never came up with more than $1 billion or so worth of problems--a small fraction of the total amount of money that was vanishing.
Now we know why so little was done.
It turns out that Bowen was never really looking very hard.
As the signing statement puts it:
Title III of the Act creates an Inspector General (IG) of the CPA. Title III shall be construed in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authorities to conduct the Nation's foreign affairs, to supervise the unitary executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The CPA IG shall refrain from initiating, carrying out, or completing an audit or investigation, or from issuing a subpoena, which requires access to sensitive operation plans, intelligence matters, counterintelligence matters, ongoing criminal investigations by other administrative units of the Department of Defense related to national security, or other matters the disclosure of which would constitute a serious threat to national security.Well, since most of the missing money has been going to or through the military in Iraq, and since the president can define just about anything having to do with Iraq as "national security," that pretty much meant nothing of consequence would be discovered by the inspector general in Iraq.
Bowen simply never mentioned to anyone that, courtesy of an unconstitutional order from the president, he was not doing the job that Congress had intended.
This would all be pretty funny except for two things.
First of all, Americans and Iraqis are dying in droves because of the chaos that the U.S. invasion and occupation have created in Iraq--a problem that that $9 billion in missing Congressionally allocated funds, and the bales of US dollars, were supposed to have solved.
Second, and I admit this is pretty speculative on my part, money being like water, it tends to flow to the lowest level, which, from a moral and ethical standpoint, would be the Bush/Cheney administration and the Republican Party machine that put them, and the do-nothing Congress that covers up for them, into office.
My guess is that a fair piece of those many billions of dollars is sloshing around back in the U.S. paying for things like Republican Party electoral dirty tricks, vote theft, bribing of Democratic members of Congress, and god knows what else.
If this seems far-fetched to anyone, remember that this administration has included a number of people who were linked to the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal, when the creative--and criminal--idea was conceived of secretly selling Pentagon stocks of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, and using the proceeds to secretly fund the U.S.-trained and organized Contra fighters who were fighting to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (Congress had inconveniently banned any U.S. aid to the Contras).
It seems to me inconceivable that this corrupt and obsessively power-mad administration would have passed up an opportunity to get its hands on some of the easy money flowing into Iraq over the course of the last three years.
What better way to follow that money than an old-fashioned impeachment hearing into why the president unconstitutionally subverted the intent of Congress in establishing an office of special inspector general for corruption in Iraq?
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns titled This Can't be Happening! is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is The Case for Impeachment, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on June 8, 2006.
