Nouri al-Maliki’s Retirement Fund?

All this talk about Hosni Mubarak’s looted billions must really piss off our other client rulers, the ones who have not yet set aside such rich stashes for their retirement.

But someone in Iraq has already made the move, disappearing $40 billion from Iraq’s development fund.

Around $40 billion are “missing” from a post-Gulf War fund that Iraq maintains to protect the money from foreign claims, its parliamentary speaker said on Monday.”There is missing money, we do not know where it has gone,” Osama al-Nujaifi said at a news conference in Baghdad. “The money is around $40 billion in total.”

[snip]

Nujaifi did not say when or how the discovery had been made regarding the missing money. He said two investigative committees had been formed to track down the cash.

But then, why should Iraq be any different from Afghanistan, where Hamid Karzi’s cronies have been looting the country since they got into power?

I’m so glad we’ve decided to spend trillions on our imperial wars rather than funding teachers and roads. The money is going to such a good cause, don’t you think?

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  1. marksb says:

    We storm into countries where power is obtained and held by guns and cronyism, drop a huge pile of U.S. dollars without much in the way of audited control, and are *surprised*! when our puppets steal the money?
    Silly rabbits! Tricks are for warlords!

  2. Frank33 says:

    MuBarack Obama is spending money in the Homeland. He is creating jobs for the Empire. He could be spending money to fight diseases. But, instead the neo-con secret Goldman Sachs government demands we create more diseases. Manhattan Kansas will get $600 million for more Bio weapons of Mass Destruction.

    You can never have to much weaponized Anthrax for False Flag attacks, or too much weaponized

    Nipah Virus
    Hendra Virus
    African Swine Fever
    Rift Valley Fever
    Japanese Encephalitis Virus
    Foot and Mouth Disease
    Classical Swine Fever
    Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia

    Should we depend on the FDA to protect us? No. My favorite on the list is “Classical” H1N1.

    • hackworth1 says:

      FDA and EPA need to be cut. Let the Free Hand of The Rush Limbaugh Market protect consumers. Companies can’t make bad products because consumers won’t consume them. Unless they already consumed them and the contractor gets paid for making bad products. Then the pollutant byproducts can be cleaned up at taxpayer expense, or the pollutants can remain because the earth cleans itself. Humans, plants and animals make good filters. Tax Cuts Create Jobs.

  3. hackworth1 says:

    GHW Bush’s New World Order indicates that Domestic Austerity Measures are needed so that Client Rulers can get their fair share of American billions.

    If Americans know it’s for a good cause, we are willing to tighten our belts.

    We’ve done it before and we can do it again. That’s the American Can-Do Spirit of Shared Sacrifice to Whip Inflation Now! Just Say No! Cut Taxes For The Richest among us! Gut Public Education! Privatize Everything! Win The Future!

    Obama is basically a good guy who’s hands are tied! – Alterman

    Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here! In the form of a Mushroom Cloud. No one could have predicted that airplanes could be flown into buildings.

  4. SanderO says:

    How do you lose 40,000,000,000 dollars? Was this money stacked up in cash in a hangar? Or was it an entry on some balance sheet attached to some bank account?

    This is BS.

  5. tanbark says:

    What else is new? Back in the heyday of Wild, wild, West, “contracting”, (and it aint over yet…) there were palletsful of bricks of $100 bills disappearing after being flown into our hoped-for 51st state by a CentCom C-130.

  6. felicity says:

    Speaking of funding wars: The total cost of WWII would have been sufficient to pay for all the following: A $16,000 house for every family in the US, Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal; A $10,000,000 library for every city of 200,000 inhabitants and over in the US, Britain, and Russia; A $50,000,000 university for each of these cities; A $2,000 automobile for every family in the US, Britain, France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway; The salaries of 100,000 teachers and an equal number of nurses for 100 years; A free college education for every boy and girl in the US from 17 to 21 years of age.

  7. tanbark says:

    Heated argument with some friends in Charleston, S.C. this weekend.

    They were hard at work inflating the deficit fear-doll when I told them that until they wanted to talk about that $3.5 bil a week being pissed down the clusterfuck urinal for lo, these many years, they had the credibility of Pastor Ted lecturing his flock about the evils of homosexuality, just hours away from snorting coke off some gay hooker’s ass.

    No more nice invitations to genteel Charleston luncheons for TB, I fear.

    (Fart; moan; ballscratch; yawn….)

    • tanbark says:

      “Daley, Chief of Staff, earned $8.7 million from JP Morgan last year.”

      I mean!

      Jesus, if you’re a republican and see that, you’ve got to think:

      “God’s in his heaven; Obama’s in the White House, and all is well…”

    • hackworth1 says:

      Daley was chosen in part because of his private sector experience, and his selection was seen as a move by the president to repair what some perceive as a strained relationship with big business. But while business leaders have approved of the selection, critics say Washington already enjoys too close of a relationship with the financial sector.

      Some perceive the Easter Bunny, while Critics can be so critical, uncivil, and just be plain ol doggone meanies! The dude earned the money by working for it!

      Tax Cuts mean that workers can keep more of their own money in their pockets. – Dubya Bush. Is our children learning?

    • ThingsComeUndone says:

      CHICAGO CITY TREASURER Miriam Santos blasted Mayor Daley’s proposal to divert Police, Fire, Laborers and Municipal Employees Pension Fund monies to pay for City expenses like new sidewalks, computers and interest payments on a variety of bond issues.

      http://www.ipsn.org/santos1.html

      That was in 1997 of course Miram was gotten rid of by Daley. Today however

      Lame duck Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has urged the Illinois General Assembly to amend a bill that aims to solve the Chicago’s pension crisis. The bill currently places a large burden on citizens. The bill would give the city 30 years to get to a 90 percent funding ratio, and cost Chicago citizens $550 million in a property tax increase in 2015.

      Daley wants Governor Quinn to fix the bill before signing it into law. “This is the highest real estate tax increase in the history of Chicago and that’s only for fire and police. If you put the other unions in there, it’s about $1.2 billion in one year. … This will really hit the people.”

      http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/blog/detail/daley-talks-il-police-and-firefighter-pension-crisis

      Federal law-enforcement authorities are probing the controversial investment of city employee pension fund dollars in a real estate firm involving Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew Robert Vanecko. A federal grand jury issued a subpoena Wednesday to the police pension fund, according to records obtained today by the Tribune.

      Prosecutors with U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald’s office are demanding fund officials turn over documents regarding their dealings with DV Urban Realty, which includes Vanecko and longtime Daley ally Allison Davis. The police fund’s board voted in 2006 to invest $15 million in DV Urban, part of a $68 million deal that also involved other local government pension funds.

      http://dupagegop.com/democrat-corruption/507–feds-probe-daley-nephews-city-pension-deal

      Its no wonder Daley has not openly endorsed Rahm.

  8. ThingsComeUndone says:

    Bush with deregulation no strings on the cash lost us 40 billion? Fine then the rich who almost to a man support deregulation need to cough up that cash. An FDR 90% tax on income and or an asset tax would work.
    Bush proved with 8 years of real world example that tax cuts for the rich don’t help the economy and create jobs. Obama has proved its been about 2 years how long should we wait for jobs that restoring the banks so they can provide credit does not create jobs.
    At least not in America however the Bush/Obama economic policy has resulted in lower wages world wide, higher food and fuel prices and revolts.
    People need food they need good jobs to get married Parasites who get greedy and kill their host before the host can reproduce don’t survive long.

      • tanbark says:

        “…are getting closer to the kill-the-host tipping point…”

        I think you put your finger on it, Things. The one consolation from Obama’s miraculous rehab on the GOP, is that they are using the new life to fuck things up even worse (see: Walker with his dick in the cheese machine…) and just maybe, the next democrat, we’ll get a prez who will come in with fire in his eye and courage in his heart.

        • hackworth1 says:

          Citizens United, Kochs and the MIC will ensure another Clinton, Kerry, Gore or Lieberman. Anybody with any principles will either check them at the door or end up like a Kennedy.

  9. mafr says:

    democracy is messy. we know where they are. sadam is seeking quantities of uranium in Niger.

    oil wells, pipelines not metered until last year, wonder how much of that got stolen , and by whom

    40 billion missing, add it to the twelve billion cash that disappeared, flown over their to be handed out.’

    fifty billion dollars missing

    one million orphans

    Obama, “the surge worked”

    those savvy businessmen.

    must share the sacrifice

    USA USA USA

    pissed away.

  10. tanbark says:

    Obama: “The surge worked.”

    Well hell, it DID!

    Bush and his coterie of wizards got out of town and dropped the pinless hand grenade right into O.’s lap.

    Anybody think he can find the pin and stick it back in, in time to stay with his exit schedule of us out of Iraq by the end of the year?

    I didn’t think so.

  11. ThingsComeUndone says:

    JP Morgan J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc. operates as an investment
    advisor managing an EAFE Plus separately managed equity portfolio for the
    Chicago Police.

    http://www.chipabf.org/6investments/documents/Q310_Fees_Conditions.pdf

    Reply
    tanbark February 21st, 2011 at 9:42 am
    25
    In response to mzchief @ 21 (show text)
    “Daley, Chief of Staff, earned $8.7 million from JP Morgan last year.”

    Sure sounds like pay to play to me why would Daley get a job at JP Morgan or anywhere else unless he had Chicago cash backing him?
    He worked his way up with hard work? Bwahahaha!
    He got a job based on his great grades at school? Bwahahaha! ( given his brother’s record thats doubtful he took the bar exam several times).
    He’s such a great money manager…JP morgan got bank bailout cash nobody at the firm is a great money manager!