| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
08 Feb 2007 02:58:28 PM |
| Object: |
The Fog of Non-Existent Republican Accountability |
From a New York Times editorial, 2/8/07:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/opinion/08thur2.html?ex=1328590800&en=0de63b7a71b8c605&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
The Fog of Accountability
The details are graphic:
billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues — 363 tons of cash — bundled
up and urgently flown to Baghdad on 484 pallets from the Federal
Reserve Bank to jump-start a new Iraqi government.
Four years later, the unanswered questions are just as graphic:
Who was responsible for the money?
What became of it?
Two years ago, the special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction
reported that $8.8 billion of the cash surge could not be adequately
accounted for by the Bush administration’s provisional governing
authority.
The Republican-controlled Congress — which shrugged off oversight
responsibilities for President Bush’s failed war — dutifully
sidestepped the issue.
Thankfully, the new Democratic Congress is finally investigating the
disappeared billions and other aspects of the war’s mismanagement.
The details emerging provide a lesson in how easily cash can evaporate
into the fog of an unmonitored war.
One $500 million outlay was explained away with a one-word record
entry — “security” — in the provisional authority’s books.
Ten disbursements ranging from $120 million to $900 million have no
documentation at all, as if they were petty cash.
Paul Bremer III, the former chief of the administration’s provisional
authority, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
this week that Iraq was strictly a cash economy with primitive
banking, and that there had been no alternative but to spur
reconstruction with a fast and poorly documented infusion of billions.
“There are no perfect solutions in Iraq," said Mr. Bremer, still cocky
despite the now increasingly apparent and seemingly limitless failures
of his tenure.
According to the inspector general and Congressional investigators,
Mr. Bremer’s provisional authority, with the full backing of the White
House and the Pentagon, doled out an estimated $12 billion to dodgy
ministries — duffle bags full, some of it from the backs of pickups.
The fact that this was Iraqi money reserved during the United Nations’
oil-for-food program is no comfort to any American taxpayer wondering
what’s been happening to the hundreds of billions Washington is
pouring into Iraq.
Republican lawmakers at the hearing again tried to gloss over the
administration’s mismanagement of the war, complaining that the
mystery billions were “old news.”
The real news is that — at long last — the truth about the Iraq fiasco
is being pursued in public by Congressional investigators.
________________________________________________
Republicans don' hafta give no steenkin' answers.
Harry
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