dots

do they connect?

in the aftermath of the tragedy on 9/11 we heard much criticism that someone (?) failed to "connect the dots." apparently the requisite dots existed, but in a variety of agencies which did not facilitate connection of their respective dots. here are a couple of dots, with two views of each, that seem to beg me to connect them, though they appeared in public at differing times.

in the first dot, there goes the money. i picked just two stories about this because it has been reported rather widely, if sporadically, over many years.

'WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly $9 billion of money spent on Iraqi reconstruction is unaccounted for because of inefficiencies and bad management, according to a watchdog report published Sunday.

An inspector general's report said the U.S.-led administration that ran Iraq until June 2004 is unable to account for the funds."

from cnn.com here.

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another view of the dot.

a pallet load of bux.

"The US flew nearly $12bn 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 US congressional committee."

from an article by david palister in the guardian on 2/8/2007. the picture is from this article. thank you Guardian Unlimited.

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now the second dot. does the money reappear? does this dot have a line from the previous dot?

"There’s a lot of pools of black money around, a lot of money. Undoubtedly, some was, I’m told, came from Iraq. That is, as you know, there were hearings the other week that showed $9 billion in Iraqi oil money mysteriously disappeared and was unaccounted for. Some of that money was washed around. There was also a lot of money found after Saddam fell. We found several caches of huge amounts, you know, hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars in some cases, of cash. We also found money in various ministries. There’s no, really, accountability, and a lot of it could have ended up in black pools. It’s just not clear where the money came from, and it’s not supposed to be clear. What you do is you wash the money in. You get it to certain people."

seymour hersh, from this interview on 2/28/2007 with amy goodman

the context of the quote is a long explication of his suspicions that our own government, or the shadow government run by cheney, is funding sunni jihadist groups in many countries in the middle east as a counter to (shia) iran.

if you're feeling chipper and want to be depressed read the whole thing. or go here to read hersh's full article on this subject.

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and another view of the second dot.

"WASHINGTON — A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity."

the lede of an article by greg miller in the la times, may 20, 2007

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i had noticed that a bunch of cash went missing a while back in iraq, and that now our own government reports that money is flowing from iraq to al qaeda in pakistan, but i had not read hersh's piece before i started looking for sources for this post. after doing so i smacked myself upside the head and said in my best homer simpson voice "DOH!" so the cia, or other "elements" of our government, took some of the dough to fund their secret operations. does that sound familiar? is ollie north catholic? does he shit in the woods?

so now, the enemy (sunni al qaeda) of our enemy (shia iran) is our friend. that worked out so well in afghanistan where the enemy (the taliban) of our enemy (russia) was our friend. until they weren't. but wait!!! aren't al qaeda and the taliban friends? are we friends-by-proxy with the taliban now? ok. i'll stop with this line of lunacy.

it looks to me that we are financing those who attack us because they hate us for our freedoms, with cash we threw around in iraq like beads at mardi gras in new orleans, some from iraqis, and maybe even some stolen by some part of our own ruling cabal.

who would benefit from permanent war, cold or hot? who has already benefitted?