Pallets of Cash

I'm so glad we have a Democratic-run House of Representatives now, so the truth we've only been reading about the Republican-run Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority these past four years can finally come out on TV. My very own Congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) was a lone voice in the wilderness until the turnover, and now he's holding hearings that will blow your mind:

The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday...

...Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

Cashola. Long Green. Sweet sweet Dead Presidents.

Bush gave Ambassador Paul Bremer a medal for the disastrous job he did running his fiefdom, dismantling the country's political infrastructure and letting oh so many steal from us taxpayers, Iraqi and American thieves.

If you want to see Bremer get thrashed by Waxman's committee today for the CPA's GOP cronyist hiring practice, click here.

If you want to see him get thrashed for spending $1.2 million of our money on an accounting firm run out of some guy's home in San Diego, click here.

And if you want to see why British Prime Minister Tony Blair will suddenly lose his job and go down in history with a ruined reputation, and why the U.K. won't possibly be in our Coalition of the Empire very much longer, click here.