The Haircut
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Tag: Iraq
Rumsfeld Said to Have Fled France to Avoid Torture Arrest
On Friday, while former Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld was visiting France, human rights groups based there and in the United States filed complaints against him, charging him with approving torture:
Rumsfeld is accused of authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The French complaint accuses Mr. Rumsfeld of authorizing torture at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and says it violated the Convention Against Torture, which came into force in 1987.
As part of their complaint, the groups submitted 11 pages of written testimony from Janis Karpinski, the highest-ranking officer to be punished in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. She was demoted to colonel from brigadier general and lost command of her military police unit. She contended that the abuses at the prison had started after the appearance of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was sent by Mr. Rumsfeld to assist military intelligence interrogators.
French prosecutors were said to have the power to pursue the case while Rumsfeld was in the country.
One source cites unconfirmed reports that Rumsfeld was abruptly whisked away from a breakfast meeting on Friday in order to avoid his arrest:
U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.
Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.
The report said Rumsfeld fled to Germany because similar charges were dismissed against him there in the spring.The German court ruled that Rumsfeld’s criminality was an internal matter for the United States.
Video: Condi Confronted in Hearing Room By Protester with Bloody Hands
Woman screams ‘War criminal!’ at Rice and ‘Take her to the hague!’ Cops drag Code Pink members out screaming even though it’s unclear they were involved
Bush Tacks ‘Emergency’ $46 Bil onto War Supplemental – Expect Another GOP Rubberstamp
Just as surely as the Republican minority in Congress will approve this new $46 billion spike in funding demanded by Pres. Bush for the war in Iraq — an amount that would more than cover the Democrats’ proposed expansion of health insurance coverage for children — the Democrats will get blamed for it:
Setting up another confrontation with congressional Democrats over the war in Iraq, President Bush on Monday sent Congress a $45.9-billion emergency funding request for expenses related to U.S. military campaigns around the world.
The request, which comes on top of $147.5 billion sought by the administration earlier this year, pushes the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to more than $600 billion.
It is a neat trick. Too bad the Dems can’t find a way to counter it.
U.S. Security Contractor in Iraq Can’t Account for $1 Bil in Taxpayer Dollars
During the first three years of the war, when the GOP controlled Congress and the White House, there was very little, if any, accountability of the money spent by government contractors in Iraq.
Among the problems identified before the audit was suspended were duplicate payments, the purchase of a never-used $1.8 million X-ray scanner and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorp officials in hotels rather than other available accommodation.
Since the Democrats took over Congress, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has been charged with trying to find out what happened to the billions of dollars the administration and its cronies have squandered, lost or stolen.
Unfortunately, in too many cases, the job has turned out to be impossible:
The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said it was forced to suspend its audit of the DynCorp contract after administration officials told investigators they had no confidence in their own accounting records.
The inspector general said the agency had not validated the accuracy of invoices received before October 2006 and described bills and supporting documents as being in disarray.
Among the problems identified before the audit was suspended were duplicate payments, the purchase of a never-used $1.8 million X-ray scanner and payments of $387,000 to house DynCorp officials in hotels rather than other available accommodation.
The inspector general blamed the problems on long-standing contract administration problems at the State Department agency responsible for the contract — the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, or INL.
“As a result, INL does not know specifically what it received for most of the $1.2 billion in expenditures under its DynCorp contract for the Iraqi Police Training Program. INL’s prior lack of controls created an environment vulnerable to waste and fraud,” SIGIR said in an interim review.
DynCorp is a private military contractor based in the Washintong suburbs that receives 96 percent of its $2 billion in annual revenues from American taxpayers.
In addition to training the Iraqi police, the company orovide security in Afghanistan and is involved in the poppy eradication program there. It was also deployed in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Bush Won’t Pay for Kids’ Health Care But Flew Billions in Shrink-Wrapped Bundles of Cash into the Iraq War Zone – a Fortune That Can’t Be Accounted for Now
Mid-2003: A reporter in Iraq stands on a pallet filled with shrink-wrapped bricks of C-Notes
“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.
Pres. Bush said he vetoed the Democrats’ expansion of the SCHIP children’s health insurance program because it was too costly. This confirms what we know about the president’s priorities. But the cost to cover 10 million additional children would be $35 billion, Democrats have pointed out, which is roughly what it takes to run Bush’s war in Iraq for 41 days.
An even more apt example of the misplaced values of Bush and his party is the story of the $12 billion or so that was flown into Iraq in 2003 and then went missing and will never be recovered. It sounds like a financial scandal of historical proportions, and yet it is one of the most under-reported story of the war:
The United States flew nearly $12 billion in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a U.S. congressional committee.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tons, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22, 2004, six days before the handover.
After this was revealed in an investigation into Bush’s handling of his invasion of Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee was prompted to ask:
“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?”
Security in the war zone was so lax as to be non-existent:
“One [Bush Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)] official described an environment awash in $100 bills,” the memorandum [on the investigation for Waxman’s committee] says. “One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.
And:
“They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division’s vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75 million in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.”
The Bush team — many of whom were inexperienced Republican Party operatives, cronies of the president and their twenty-something kids — lost or ripped off millions of dollars from the UN that was intended to feed Iraq’s poor people:
On April 12, 2004, the [CPA] in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people.
The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, “there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.”
Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad … kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
To get a sense of the Bushies’ attitude about the loss of the money, here is retired Admiral David Oliver, who was Bremer’s financial advisor, on the loss of billions of Oil for Food dollars:
“I have no idea. I can’t tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn’t – nor do I actually think it’s important.”
Q: “But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace.”
Oliver: “Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I’m saying what difference does it make?”
The reason Adm. Oliver should have cared — aside from the fact that finance was his purview — is that some of this cash very likely fueled the insurgency that ensued a few months later. It is also likely the money ended up in the hands of terrorists who used it to buy weapons to kill our troops.
Video: Bush in 2004 Amused by Iraq War
At about the 5:15 mark, Bush starts a running joke about the search for WMD. Very funny, especially now that nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have died on his orders to find the weapons.
Rep. Pete Stark Blasts Bush on Children’s Health Insurance, Iraq War – Hangs Tough Against GOP Onslaught
Pete Stark, Democrat of California, speaking on the House floor yesterday:
First of all, I’m just amazed that they can’t figure out — the Republicans are worried that we can’t pay for insuring an additional ten million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you gonna get that money? You gonna tell us lies, like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have the money to fund the war or children, but you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people, if we could get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement.
This bill would provide health care for ten million children and, unlike the President’s own kids, these children can’t see a doctor or receive necessary care. Six million are insured through the Children’s Health Insurance Program and they’ll do better in school, and in life. In California, the President’s veto will cause the legislature to draw up emergency regulations to cut some 800,000 children off the rolls in California and create a waiting list.
I hope my California Republican colleagues will understand that if they don’t vote to override this veto, they are destroying health care for many of our children in California.
In the previous job as an actor, our Governor used to play make-believe and blow things up. Well, [the] President and Republicans in Congress are playing make-believe today with children’s lives. They claim we can’t afford health care. They say the bill will socialize medicine. Tell that to Orrin Hatch, Chuck Grassley and Ted Stevens, those socialists on the other side of this capitol. The truth is: [The] CHIP program enables states to cover children primarily through private health care plans. But, President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up… in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.
I urge my colleagues to vote to override his veto. America’s children need and deserve health care, despite the President’s desire to deny it to them.
Stark’s assertion that the troops die in Iraq for Bush’s “amusement” gave Republicans ammunition, and House Minority Leader John Boehner fired back:
New Gov’t Report: Surge Producing Little Progress in Iraq
Attempts by American-led reconstruction teams to forge political reconciliation, foster economic growth and build an effective police force and court system in Iraq have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and in the capital, a federal oversight agency reported on Thursday.
The report, by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, comes as the United States tries to take advantage of a drop in overall violence to create a functioning government here.
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general, testified about the report to a House Armed Services subcommittee yesterday.
Al Qaeda in Iraq Said to Be Defeated
This appears to be credible:
The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq [AQI] in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.
Of course, it could be White House propaganda to seed good news into the media, however one of the reporters, Thomas Ricks, is the author of “Fiasco,” a book on the Bush administration’s disastrous war planning.
And while the defeat of bin Laden’s franchise group in Iraq is good news for Iraqis and U.S. troops, it is not necessarily a positive development for war advocates, including Pres. George W. Bush who has used AQI as a bogeyman to prolong the fight — as he did in July, addressing a pro-war group in South Carolina:
“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Bush said, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the affiliated group in Iraq who was killed last year.
Mr. Bush called the two similarly named groups “an alliance of killers,” and said, “No enemy is more ruthless in Iraq than Al Qaeda”…
“We’ll stay on the hunt, we’ll deny them safe haven, and we will defeat them where they have made their stand,” he said. “However difficult the fight is in Iraq, we must win it. And we can win it.”
It is possible that news about the defeat of AQI is the first step in a strategy by the administration to declare victory in Iraq and get out.
