What happened to$12 billion dollars ofIraqi oil money?
House Panel Questions Lost Cash Shipments To IraqBy Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 9th, 2007A U.S. House committee report on Tuesday questioned whether nearly $12 billion in cash shipped to Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004 might have ended up with the insurgent groups now blowing up the country on a daily basis.Billions of dollars in cash was shipped to Iraq after the American invasion, mostly in huge, shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills. This was apparently done to facilitate quick payments to certain Iraqis on a discrete, immediate basis.The report was released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, at a hearing in which Democrats sharply questioned the former American civilian administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, about his severe mismanagement of Iraq’s billions.Bremer responded by defending his performance as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and claimed that the United States had to bring tons of American dollars into Iraq because the country had no functioning banking system.“We had to pay Iraqis in cash,” said Bremer of the money, most of which came from Iraqi oil sales. “Delay would have been demoralizing and unfair to millions of Iraqi families.”Of course, invading a country and turning it into hell on earth for no good reason is far more demoralizing to the Iraqi people; but Bremer did not take his analysis quite that far.Government auditors have repeatedly criticized both the American and Iraqi governments for failing to properly monitor the money once it reached Iraq. And of course, Mr. Bremer is being questioned for his gross mismanagement of those billions; why $12 billion was brought into Iraq is rather beside the point.Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is the committee’s new chairman, apparently felt compelled to do a little grandstanding at Bremer’s expense; it’s not very seemly, but grandstanding is the politician’s job–and for a rare moment it’s being directed at someone whose incompetence makes him deserving of the insult.Waxman admitted he had no direct evidence that Iraqi insurgent groups had received any of the cash, but he hinted that it was possible, given the huge sums of money which was lost after being rushed into the country.“We have no way of knowing if the cash that was shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands,” said Waxman. “We owe it to the American people to do everything we can to find out where the $12 billion went.”The hearing was further evidence that those who gave us the mess that is Iraq are facing a different Congress and a different America since the conflict started four years ago.Bremer was lauded by Republicans and Democrats alike when he last testified at a Congressional hearing in 2004. But those days are long gone. This time, Bremer found himself the target of biting criticism from Democrats on Tuesday. They openly hinted that his mismanagement may help explain the continuing turmoil in Iraq.The Democrats are looking for a whipping boy on this one, rather than real answers. Bremer was not a very good de-facto leader of the Persian Gulf country, it’s true; but he was not the one who lied to America and to its troops to get them into a country they clearly did not have to invade.An invasion based on lies and fraud is almost destined to end in chaos. Mr. Bremer had nothing to do with starting this fake war. Whatever his abilities, he was trying to make the best out of an impossible situation. Bremer stepped down from his Iraq post in June 2004.“I acknowledged that I made mistakes,” Bremer told the committee. “And with the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently.” But he said that given the chaos he found after arriving in Iraq in May 2003, “I think we made great progress under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable.”But the committee members weren’t interested in buying such wishful thinking. Mr. Waxman, whose panel is pursuing investigations of fraud and abuse by the federal government and its contractors in Iraq, said he found it remarkable that the Bush Administration had decided to send billions of dollars of American currency into Iraq before United States forces had proper control of the country.The committee calculated that the $12 billion in cash, most of it in the stacks of $100 bills, weighed 363 tons and was flown in on wooden pallets aboard giant C-130 military cargo planes.“Who in their right mind would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” Waxman asked.“That’s exactly what our government did.”
