363 Tons of U.S. Cash and What Do You Get?
There was no need to convince me of President Bush's criminal marketing and horrible mishandling of the war. This story of spreading 100 dollar bills around Iraq - roughly 16 semi-truck loads full - still caught me a little by surprise. How in the hell did some of this money get by Halliburton? Seriously, I have little doubt that some of this cash played a role in the killing of American soldiers. 12 billion spread around Iraq can make a lot of things happen. Sorry, New Orleans!
How the US sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited
posted by Bill McDonald @ 8:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Here's another one that slipped through the cracks, sorta before the internet could archive the news. Someone, somewhere, someday, though, is going to crank up Lexis Nexis and retrieve the two articles I read, most likely in the NYTimes, about 18 months apart, (say, '94 and '95, if memory serves), reporting the essential elements of this story.
Sometime in early Bush Sinister, that'd be '88, '89, '90, an authentic US Treasury printing plate set, (there were 4 sets), for the US $100 bill, was 'stolen' and ended up in Iraq, to Saddam.
Saddam then printed billions of dollars 'worth' of $100 bills. (Not really counterfeit -- it was true US Treasury plates.) The 'funny' money was flooded into US circulation, (and in other countries), '90 - 94 and longer.
Corroborating or correlating events in the time period, might be: The dot.com boom -- there was venture capital EVERYwhere, money for nothing and chicks for free.
The 'outspent' implosion of the USSR ?
And more. Anyway, Newtie and the boys come swinging into D.C. in '95 and early in their agenda, out of nowhere, they start a process to redesign the US $100 bill. It was during that congressional testimony that the quiet news item said 'we had to' print new $100's because 'Saddam had valid plates for the old $100's.' (Now this may have been pre-Newtie, as early as '93 in testimony -- so if B.Sinister had won in '92, it would have stayed secret? because B.Sinister 'arranged' the plates to Saddam? but when Clinton won, the secret was leaked to try to make it a 'gov't liability' for Clinton's 'gov't?')
Anyway, you probably recall when Oregon Guards and the rest of the invading US forces launched Bush Jughead's insurgent incursion into Iraq, right at first, a bunch of soldiers discovered pallet-full after pallet-full of fresh US $100 bills. Everyone say, HUH? Jughead said squat, nada.
And, you might notice that every piece of paper money in your billfold today is different from what it was 10 years ago. (The second? news article included the idea, that since we 'had to' redesign the $100, we should redesign the $50, $20, $10, $5, and $1, to make it look uniform like a wholesale redesign of the currency and that way disguise the fact that we had an isolated problem with the $100.)
And you might notice some coin specie in your pocket are 'redesigned' too. I'm not sure what that's all about, but there was an early Newtie attempt to re-do dimes, taking off Truman and putting on Reagan. When it got laughed off the agenda, Newtie's patooties came back with putting Reagan in replacing one of the George Washington's, either the quarter or the $1, they didn't care. Somehow, removing G.Washington from ANYthing was political sacrilege, dead on the mention of it. The last whimper I recall was a Newtietroops faint suggestion that they'd be willing to settle for the penny for Reagan, although they thought it was unfair they had to lose the only Republican (Lincoln) that's on any money, to trade for Reagan.
And I never heard any more about it.
Maybe Reagan is on the California quarter, and I haven't paid any attention. Hell, I hardly pay a quarter for anything anymore "... and one thin dime, won't even shine, your shoes."
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