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.
Mike Kay
I love the smell of nation building in the morning.
Svensker
I’m sure Hannity, Rush, Beck, et al, will be all over this. Real soon.
Michael
Why do you want the terrorists to win? Reporting on this clearly exposes your Hate America agenda.
Bill E Pilgrim
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
Oops wrong thread.
El Cid
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
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
Color me unsurprised…. and it’s a beautiful morning in South Florida and I’m at work… bah, humbug.
rootless-e
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
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
Heckuva job Bushie.
Jake
Again, how is Dan Senor financing his possible Senate campaign? Someone should check his sock drawer.
AhabTRuler
To be fair, it was a group effort.
kay
@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
@kay:
Easily vanishing assets were a feature of Bush Jr. era rule, not a bug.
kommrade reproductive vigor
They just wanted to take their footballs made out of $100 bills home. You know, as a souvenir.
KCinDC
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
FYI, here’s that song before Liz was big.
hurts like shit and it feels like America.
Mike in NC
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
@Mike in NC:
I don’t know, I still feel that Cortez takes the cake on that one.
mistermix
@cleek: I thought the whole song was pretty appropriate to this post…
Biscuits
Huge piles of cash missing and ammunition depots looted. That wont end badly.
Bootlegger
@SGEW: For pure waste of blood and treasure followed by centuries of open conflict you can’t beat the Crusades.
WereBear
@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
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
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
Remember the bags of cash, reported during the first months of the invasion. That was a VERY successful operation for Roves buddies.
Mark
Whataya mean nobody could’ve predicted it. 1999’s “Three Kings” predicted it.