{"id":1505,"date":"2005-06-29T14:13:18","date_gmt":"2005-06-29T18:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.test.bradblog.com\/?p=1505"},"modified":"2005-06-29T14:13:18","modified_gmt":"2005-06-29T18:13:18","slug":"billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-blown-disappeared-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=1505","title":{"rendered":"Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Blown, Disappeared in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is from <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/news?tmpl=story&#038;u=\/nm\/20050622\/ts_nm\/iraq_cash_dc_3\" target=\"_blank\">a Reuters article<\/a> we&#8217;d missed last week. It seems that there are still George W. Bush supporters who are gullible enough to believe he actually <i>gives a damn<\/i> about their tax burden and the way in which their money is spent. Apparently such folks will believe anything. <\/p>\n<p>Yet since Bush didn&#8217;t feel it important enough to broach this subject last night in his report to the American People on how well things are going in Iraq, we suspect this news &#8212; even a week old &#8212; is still notable enough that we should help get out the word about what&#8217;s <i>actually<\/i> happening in Iraq&#8230;<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">A report by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, said in the week before the hand-over on June 28, 2004, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority ordered the urgent delivery of more than $4 billion in Iraqi funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York.<\/p>\n<p>One single shipment amounted to $2.4 billion &#8212; the largest movement of cash in the bank&#8217;s history, said Waxman.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nCash was loaded onto giant pallets for shipment by plane to Iraq, and paid out to contractors who carried it away in duffel bags.<\/p>\n<p>The report, released at a House of Representatives committee hearing, said despite the huge amount of money, there was little U.S. scrutiny in how these assets were managed.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nAn audit by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said U.S. auditors could not account for nearly $8.8 billion in Iraqi funds and the United States had not provided adequate controls for this money.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nContractors were told to turn up with big duffel bags to pick up their payments and some were paid from the back of pick-up trucks.<\/p>\n<p>One picture shows grinning CPA officials standing in front of a pile of cash said to be worth $2 million to be paid to a security contractor.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nIn total, more than 281 million individual bills, including more than 107 million $100 bills, were shipped to Iraq on giant pallets loaded onto C-130 planes, the report said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is from a Reuters article we&#8217;d missed last week. It seems that there are still George W. Bush supporters who are gullible enough to believe he actually gives a damn about their tax burden and the way in which their money is spent. Apparently such folks will believe anything. Yet since Bush didn&#8217;t feel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","bb-type-bradblog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}