365 Tons of Cash

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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$12 Billion For Iraq Unaccounted For
February 6, 2007
Waxman and a hearing witness, special inspector general for Iraq Stuart Bowen Jr., criticized Bremer for failing to install accounting systems that would have forced Iraqi ministries to account for up to $12 billion in Iraq’s funds. The money came from a United Nations Oil For Food program and seized Iraqi assets, but fell under Bremer’s control…

Waxman said up to $12 billion in Iraqi money was converted to dollars, held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and shipped in pallets to Baghdad that totaled 363 tons…

In related news, the Department of Defense said Monday that the war on terrorism has cost $545 billion to date.

Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas told reporters that Congress has appropriated $452 billion for the war on terrorism via emergency supplemental budget measures.

Another $3 billion has been appropriated for Operation Noble Eagle, the mission providing a combat air patrol over the continental United States and security at airports that started after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she said.

The comptroller said the department is asking for another $93.4 billion as part of the emergency supplemental request for 2007.

She projected $141.7 billion in operational expenses in fiscal 2008. This will bring the total for the war on terrorism to about $690 billion.

I sometimes wonder if the average person is truly aware of how much ONE billion really is? Like 30 years is about a billion seconds.

Thinking about the weight of just the UNACCOUNTED FOR $12 billion, I thought I’d add some more astounding stats…

For simplicity sake, I pretended that the $12 billion was all in $100 dollar bills. Weight-wise, this comes out to 120 tons (each bill = 1gm).

Physically this would be 120 MILLION, $100 dollar bills.

It takes 2000 bills to make a stack 1 foot tall. 120 million divided by 2000 = 60,000 ft.

60,000 ft divided by 5,280 (ft per mile) = a stack of $100 bills 11.4 MILES high.

Another fun fact to put things in perspective:

Hyundai Celebrates Grand Opening of First U.S. Plant
This $1.1 billion automotive plant is one of the most advanced assembly plants in North America.

HMMA currently employs more than 2800 Team Members who are building Hyundai’s next generation Sonata sedan and the all new Santa Fe sport utility vehicle (SUV) at the Hyundai Alabama plant.

The 2-million square-foot manufacturing plant resides on 1,744 acres of land and includes a stamping facility, paint shop, vehicle assembly shop, a two-mile test track and an engine shop, where the all-new Hyundai 3.3-liter V6
engine is produced…

HMMA will produce 300,000 vehicles per year at full capacity.
http://www.hmmausa.com/

Be sure and get a good look at that plant. Now imagine 10 more of those, state of the art, fully automated, 2-million square-foot manufacturing facilities – and thats what $12 billion missing dollars looks like.

“In related news, the Department of Defense said Monday that the war on terrorism has cost $545 billion to date.”

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SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Lol seriously though don’t be stooopid it’s supply/demand at work. It’s all science baby.

Besides it’s not like 12 billion could be stolen without the assistance from people in powerful and capable positions and then not investigated from positions above those in question. You’re acting like it was successfully stolen without a trace you kook! lol!

That would entail a whole lot of corruption, which as freedom knows can’t survive in freedom, the glove just doesn’t fit her hand it’s WAY too large!

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[quote]metalsluggx wrote:
That would entail a whole lot of corruption,[/quote]

Hell it works in Europe pretty well.

What makes you think it doesn’t work here? We even have corruption in Canada (although with smaller funds because we have a smaller country).

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Not a peep about this over on the Right. They’re too busy pissing their pants over how much Nancy Pelosi’s air travel costs.

Now that’s perspective.

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[quote]Brad61 wrote:
Not a peep about this over on the Right. They’re too busy pissing their pants over how much Nancy Pelosi’s air travel costs.

Now that’s perspective.[/quote]

Now that we’re suddenly pinching pennies, that’s around 333 C32’s @ est $36 million ea. / and 545,455 hours of flying time @ $22,000 per hour for $12 billion…or about 4 painted schools.

6

“Money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.”
-Donald Rumsfeld, Sept 10, 2001

They say, timing is everything…

The War On Waste
Jan. 29, 2002
(CBS) On Sept. 10, 2001 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, “the adversary’s closer to home. It’s the Pentagon bureaucracy,” he said.

He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat.

“In fact, it could be said it’s a matter of life and death,” he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day - Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

Just last week President Bush announced, “my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending.”

More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted. [on Sept 10, 2001]

$2.3 trillion - that’s $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

“We know it’s gone. But we don’t know what they spent it on,” said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency’s balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

“The director looked at me and said ‘Why do you care about this stuff?’ It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job,” said Minnery.

He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.

“They have to cover it up,” he said. “That’s where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can’t do the job.”

The Pentagon’s Inspector General “partially substantiated” several of Minnery’s allegations but could not prove officials tried “to manipulate the financial statements.”

Twenty years ago, Department of Defense Analyst Franklin C. Spinney made headlines exposing what he calls the “accounting games.” He’s still there, and although he does not speak for the Pentagon, he believes the problem has gotten worse.

“Those numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year,” he said.

Another critic of Pentagon waste, Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, commanded the Navy’s 2nd Fleet the first time Donald Rumsfeld served as Defense Secretary, in 1976.

In his opinion, “With good financial oversight we could find $48 billion in loose change in that building, without having to hit the taxpayers.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

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I’m guessing that to answer this question you’d have to get it out of someone who is white, a republican american, whose name is Bremer…just a guess though.

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Jack Cafferty on the missing 12 billion:

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The Daily Show’s take on the missing money.

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Why do we keep thinking that this money is “lost”?

It went to:

  1. Damascus, Tehran and to El Sardr and his people and fuels the War to this day.

  2. Good 'ole American Contractor Fraud. (Hell…I see it everyday in the Sub-Divisions being built around me).

So…let’s stop the “lost” stuff.

Mufasa

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JTF, post something interesting about Putin/Russia vs. the US.