Iraq Graft Inquiry Widens to Include Senior U.S. Officers
By Susie Madrak Monday Feb 16, 2009 5:30amWell, the money went somewhere - and apparently very little went into actually rebuilding Iraq:
Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Court records show that last month investigators subpoenaed the personal bank records of Col. Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country’s broken infrastructure. In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.
It is not clear what specific evidence exists against the two men, and both said they had nothing to hide from investigators. Yet officials say that several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation the men helped to run. As part of the inquiry, the authorities are taking a fresh look at information given to them by Dale C. Stoffel, an American arms dealer and contractor who was killed in Iraq in late 2004.
Before he was shot on a road north of Baghdad, Mr. Stoffel drew a portrait worthy of a pulp crime novel: tens of thousands of dollars stuffed into pizza boxes and delivered surreptitiously to the American contracting offices in Baghdad, and payoffs made in paper sacks that were scattered in “dead drops” around the Green Zone, the nerve center of the United States government’s presence in Iraq, two senior federal officials said.
Mr. Stoffel, who gave investigators information about the office where Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle worked, was deemed credible enough that he was granted limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information, according to government documents obtained by The New York Times and interviews with officials and Mr. Stoffel’s lawyer, John H. Quinn Jr. There is no evidence that his death was related to his allegations of corruption.
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What, no pizza?
Having the munchies in Iraq must be a bitch.
of pizza pie, with oodles of extra rich toppings.
I'd say his death was evidence of the truth of his revelations.
USers and Iraqis involved in graft, hundreds of millions of unaccounted and unaccountable dollars floating around in cash (remember the pallet-loads of $100s that the military guys "lost?"
One reason military guys LOVE war and the chaos and confusion that ensues from it is that it makes it soooo much easier tos staeal shit...And looting is one of the ancient "privileges" of the warrior (along with rape, which is/was not unknown among or sterling soldiers, too)....
Whatayoutalkinabout...
There's a Liquor Barn and a Pizza Hut across from every Mosque.
which is supposed to be U.S. property, so hopefully he hasn't taken it in the moving van with him.
is expensive! Especially when the White House thinks you can run your foreign policy with a loaded rifle and truck-loads of cash. WHAT FOOLS.
I hope indictments do not stop at the level of Colonel. I hope they flow UP-HILL to GENERALS, ASSISTANT SECRETARIES, and SECRETARIES OF DEFENSE TOO.
Sorry to say, but the military forces have been the ultimate mercenary whores for these bastards. They have played everybody.
shocking, I tell you............SHOCKING....
okay, snark off. Just sickening how much of this has been going on that is JUST NOW coming through. I really don't know what the tipping point will have to be, here.
There will be no tipping point. There was and is ample evidence that the last 8 years were about nothing more than raping the national treasury. Every policy and action was weighted towards allowing corporate cronies to siphon money out of the vault. We was robbed. The evidence is clear.
But as long as the Rethuglicans and their water-carriers are allowed to spew their deceitful, fractious bile and keep a significant portion of the population living in fear of a lib'rul planet, there will never be a reckoning, and ultimately they'll get away with it.
As I've said before, CheneyCo et. al., were a real-world simulacrum of the Gruber Gang from "Die Hard"- no over-arching ideological principles, it was always just about the money. And now it's gone.
"Art of War II" only more chaotic I'm sure
We have to wonder how much of this money went into Bramer's pockets?
We also have to wonder what other "top brass" in Washington were "on the take" with this. This is a stinging, rotten pit of graft and larceny of the people's hard-earned money.
They all need to be sentenced to life in prison to be "orally stuffed" with pizza every 10 minutes!
We know that Rummy alluded to this missing money when he was driven out of office. Now the obvious question: How much of this money did the Bush Crime cabal put into offshore accounts of their own?
And whistleblower Stoeffel's "suspicious" death is beginning to mimick our football hero/turned whistleblower's "suspicious" death now, too.
All roads lead to corruption; all roads lead right back to Bush & Cheney.
It goes without saying that the Feds need to subpoena both Rummy's personal bank records as well as Paul Braemer's.
I'd like to see someone audit the entire govt. And all the banks that asked for bailout money. Audit the entire Govt' and especially the Iraq war spending. The people of this country are entitled to know where all that money went to. This is huge. I hope someone does the right thing. If not, this set an unacceptable example for the citizenry. Why should anyone follow any laws? If these guys didn't? I understand that this all sounds juvenile or naive. But the bottom line is,Why should anyone follow the rule of law?
What a great idea, MS! I'd like to see that, too. Be sure to include all of Congress as well, not so much for tax problems but for "expenses" and "gifts". I believe expenses are covered beyond their salaries.
Oh, and another thing. Government contracting. Contracts are granted for X amount of dollars and then the contractor charges more than the contract amount by who knows how much. It's paid without a word or review for its necessity -- it's expected. We saw it with private contractors in Iraq, and it's commonly practiced here in the states.
I ordered a pizza and all they brought me was this lousy money...
I've been ordering pizza for years. All they ever deliver is this lousy pizza.
Commission on Wartime Contracting
Since it will be 'bi-partisan,' it will be toothless, too.
Besides, since both parties have been complicit in this crime, there is no incentive to actually bare all the corruption...
Eventually, they'll issue a report, on paper too thick to wipe your ass, which would be th4e only logical use for it...
I'm certain baby boars have a use for them ;)
Unfortunately the only thing I see coming out of this are a few more "mysterious" deaths. Perhaps a few sacrificial lambs will be offered up, the real puppetmasters cut the strings and walk away.
I say invade the Cayman Islands, that's where the money is.
Am I the only one who see's them taking out the whistle blower protection in this current stimulus bill as odd?
The DC Madame, she knew too much. Pat Tillman, he figured out what was happening. And Stoffel, He was coming forward.
The bodies are stackin up folks. Somethings gotta give.
Wonder how many times he gets his name mispelled? Likely the only justice that will come of this is if they track all the cash and discover it was invested with Bernie Madoff.
...that Halliburton moved to Dubai.
Unemployment is rampant.
Foreign workers fleeing debtors' prison, are leaving their cars at the airports and just up and leaving.
Along with the unnecessary death and suffering in Iraq, the waste and fraud involved with the entire effort will be the Bush legacy. In a
perfect world, there would be some corruption and larceny involved,
however this was far from a perfect world. The presence of military
contractors of questionable ability and character, and the use of
no bid contracts all but assured theft and mismanagement on an
unprecedented scale. I fear if the whole truth were known that even Tony Soprano would blush at the brazen and outlandish nature of the
of the scheme.
The sad irony of the situation is that the very same republican
conspirators that turned a blind eye to all this are the same
people who go on news shows every day to decry wasteful spending
in the new stimulus bill. Sadder still is that they recieve air time to spout this garbage, and not one so called journalist, has the
knowledge or the know how to call them out on it.
When was it exactly that the Republik Party became so concerened with how and where taxpayer money was spent? I must have missed it.
For all I know the entire stimulus bill is wasteful spending, at least it will be wasted in the United States rather than Iraq.
cash on forklifts just asking to be diverted? It must have been like Christmas morning for all the Milo Minderbinders.
World War One:
Nye Committee
Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry (The Nye Report), U.S. Congress, Senate, 74th Congress, 2nd sess., February 24, 1936, pp. 3-13.
World War Two:
The Truman Committee
Follow the Milo Money.
people still defend Bush? Unemployed people defending BushCo while this shit is going on?
President Obama and VP Biden, do your job and bring on the arrests!
Just for you JohnnyBravo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSiYkuPdeng
For every military crook there is a legislator and industrial K street crook just around the corner. Eisenhower should be vindicated with supporting arguments or proof if this is done correctly.
Comes with every little military adventure. Read online that in Vietnam, US military inflated everything including kill numbers to impress politicians at home and to get more funding and soldiers, cuz victory was just around the corner. "If only we had more funds, weapons and soldiers".....happens all the time. Besides, if the government sets aside 100 bill a month, you have to use more than that to make it look like you are really trying hard.
The UK Independent's headline for this story is A 'Fraud' Bigger Than Madoff.
If Madoff is prosecuted for his ripoff of Americans, we can not offer fewer consequences for the fraud of military personnel in Iraq. (Maybe start with Bremmer.)
This story needs to be kept alive. For as long as it takes.
As an added bonus it would be nice if we could keep the whistleblowers alive too.
Unfortunately, I think someone near and dear to all this said it best: "Naht gunna happen..."
It took two years for a bank teller with a bad gambling habit to get caught stealing money. It was done by the teller replacing it with new money from the vault. But one day the Teller was hospitalized in an auto accident and the tellers replacement discovered the theft. The government is now taking money out of the vault to cover up years of spending money that it did not have. It might be called embezzlement if the vault door was closed and the American public looked at the books.
Oh ya, monitoring a border famous for blackflies and mosquitoes! Not only is Big Brother watching you, now he's watching his allies too. Never know when one of those pesky blackfly terrists will cross the border!!
U.S. set to launch unmanned aerial drones to monitor Manitoba borderhttp://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/02/16/drones-border.html#socialcomments
Thank Gawd a new government was elected to enact all those "changes". Oh wait, they are continuing the Shrub war on terror. Well, if they don't repeat that mantra in their speeches, then they will stop doing it.
That reminds me of the time the Minutemen came to Vermont. They were NOT welcome.
They were used to sitting on their fat ass and watching 100 miles of border in the desert. They were surprised to find dense woods and no clear boundary. So they wandered off into the wilderness with their gear and ... promptly became illegal immigrants by walking illegally into Canada! Clueless idiots had no idea where the border was!
Needless to say, they left in embarrassment! And good riddance! We like Derby Line, where the international border goes right through the middle of the town's library / opera house. Now the Fed is demanding they put an apartheid wall right down the middle of main street!
One of the first thing Bush did was to remove the local Customs Agents, who lived in town and knew anybody and could spot a stranger at 500 yards, with Border Patrol, fresh off the southern border, who didn't know anybody and acted as if everyone was already an illegal. They kept arresting one US citizen for buying gas! They wanted him to go 50 miles out of his way to the only open 'border crossing' in the area just to cross the street.
The Bush plan of militarizing the US border has far more to do with keeping US citizens in than keeping anyone out!
agree with those ideals of Bush. Bush isn't the Prez anymore, and these border ideas are still continuing. A fence is needed between the US and Mexico, but drones between the US and Canada? What is next? Are they going to blame Canadian illegals daily in the media too??
No one ever really believed that a dime of that money was intended to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure that was intentionally destroyed by America - did they???
By the way:
Bombing civilian infrastructure (water, sewer, etc.) is a war crime, as is bombing suspected chemical, biological and nuclear sites. So the US gleefully committed war crimes under Bush and their fervor to attack Iran's nuclear sites was a near-miss war crime.
How much was ended up 'missing' in Iraq...9 Billion??? More?
No one has 'heard' from Mr. Bremer for awhile, either............
Hopefully, the guilty will face one.
Just don't understand the American way of business. MM Enterprises (Milo Minderbinder, again) is only a small part of it.
It's the siphoning up theory. Like medicinal bleeding of two hundred years ago. The lower classes need to be bled of their advances every few years. The trick is to figure out how to be on the receiving end. We've had hundred dollar hammers for decades and it's considered to be our way to pension off our political, economic and military leaders. Didn't you see that in the Constitution?
It's Democrats too, like Diane Feinstein's husband is a major sub-contractor in Iraq. Why did she demand that Bush should get whoever he wanted for the Supremes and most other nominations, but Obama's choices are subject to immediate rejection.
It's Walter Reed. The present (at that time) employees want to bid to continue to do the work and bid $105 million/year to keep all staff. A Halliburton spin-off offers to do it for $110 million/year while cutting staff by two-thirds. The VA, on it's own, adds six million to the present staff bid making the Halliburton cheaper by one million and, so, Halliburton gets the job. There is a scandal because the conditions deteriorate so badly. It's discovered and the one military officer who was to oversee the work gets canned. Halliburton keeps going because no one will question the success of privitization.
Oh, yes, and whistleblower protection is denied for the bank stimulus bill because a Maine Republican representative thinks that whistleblowers might weaken our fight against terrorists.
and his relationship to former Congressional candidate Diana Irey (John Murtha opponent 2006) back in 2006. It is an amazing story including speculation he was CIA (I found no evidence of that but real CIA agents don't leave tracks you can Google). His assassination was due to his contract to dismantle and scrap the former Iraqi Army equipment.
Insurgents saw this as the U.S. eliminating any chance of Iraq defending itself so they killed him then posted documents from his briefcase online. A link to the article from my original blog location at Blogspot: http://paproprogressive.blogspot.com/2006/09/...
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