During the now infamous State of the Union Address on January 28th, 2003, President Bush went all out to sell the war to the American public by declaring Saddam Hussein to be guilty of just about everything under the sun, from the now discredited African Uranium purchase to estimating that Saddam had the material to produce as much as 500 tons of Sarin, mustard, and VX gasses. AltPress was not buying any of it. We knew Saddam was a third rate dictator in command of a decimated fourth rate army with obsolete equipment, no spare parts and lousy morale. We couldn’t understand why the Bush administration wanted this man dead. American (and European) companies had collected millions in profits from Saddam’s regime. Once the Bush administration could get him out of power and take charge of Baghdad, however, the profits would prove even greater. The propaganda machine shifted into full gear, and anyone asking questions was shouted down as an unpatriotic terrorist appeaser. Jingoism was in full cry and we witnessed truly juvenile behavior, such as officials in Congress changing the name of French fries to freedom fries (never mind that French fries actually originated in Belgium). American flags and “support our troops” (whatever that means) stickers adorned the bumpers of SUVs across the nation as the population braced itself for war against a country they could barely find on a map.

The corporate controlled mass media quickly fell in line, with so-called reporters of the ilk of Judy Miller at the NY Times leading the cheer to war. Miller now languishes in a D.C. jail, either double-crossed by her masters or holding out for a better deal. Katie Couric went live on the Today show to offer her insight about the war, that Navy Seals are “cool”.

The administration knew exactly what it was doing, and any questions were quickly dismissed by the Pentagon. As the reasons for the invasion became clear, the administration fell back on its old standbys of spreading democracy, freedom for all, stabilization, and fighting terrorism.

And then the real reason stumbled out from under its rock: money, to the tune of billions of American dollars. The great looting of the American treasury began. The initial costs in both blood and treasure were low-balled to the American public by a host of administration bureaucrats. The cost would be one or two billion, they said, and would be paid for with Iraqi oil funds. In effect, Iraq would finance its own defeat. The cost in soldiers was downplayed as well. Anyone who wanted more troops committed to the initial invasion was suddenly transferred or was simply retired out of the way. This was not really the beginning; it was merely out in the open for everyone to see. That is, if they could sort through the dogma fed to them by the corporate mass media.

A few days before April 12th, 2004, three Black Hawk helicopters arrived with over $1.5 billion, shrink-wrapped $100 bills on pallets. The cash came from the United Nations food for oil program, and had been entrusted to the Americans to be spent on projects to aid the Iraqi people. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) handed over the money to a local courier near Erbil in northern Iraq. The problem was that the CPA didn’t bother to check the courier’s identification before handing over the cash. As a result, a later audit by the CPA’s inspector general concluded that “there was an increased risk of the loss or the theft of the cash.”

The American pro-counsel in Baghdad, Paul Bremmer, maintained a “slush fund of nearly 600 million in cash” for which there was no paperwork. A soldier was in charge of 200 million of this cash. It was kept in a room in one of many of Saddam’s palaces. Security was lax to say the least. The soldier kept the key in a backpack, which he left alone and unattended on his desk whenever he went out. Ably guarded by mercenaries from Black Water, no doubt.

The Special Inspector general for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) audit issued in April revealed that CPA headquarters in Baghdad “did not maintain full control and accountability for approximately $119.9 million.” Agents in the field, mostly Americans on short term contracts, ‘cannot properly account or support over 96.6 million in cash and receipts.”

The auditors discovered many instances of creative accounting: one agent was given 25 million in cash and CPA chief Paul Bremmer ‘acknowledged not having any supporting documentation.’ Another agent received $23 million, but only $6,306,836 has been credited to contractors. Some agents submitted their paper work for audit just hours before heading to the airport. Two of them simply failed to account for more than $750,000, and the money was never recovered. The Coalition’s headquarters actually cleared several balances between $250,000 and a whopping $12 million without any receipts at all!!

Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), subsidiary of the world infamous Halliburton, seemed to toss money around willy-nilly, and collect it as well. A KBR contract involved motor transport between various U.S. bases. It bought fleets of brand new Mercedes Benz trucks (not even GM!) at $85,000 each, and if any of them broke down under the harsh conditions, they were not recovered, just burned on the side of the road. If the US military had no deliveries on a given day, KBR sent out the empty trucks and billed the government anyway.

The Government Accounting office audit makes the total lack of US planning clear. The army had no idea how it was going to provision itself after the invasion. According to (source), “the Army’s central command did not develop plans to use the KBR contract to support its military forces in Iraq until May of 2003.” This contract was worth $3.894 billion and still KBR could not provide properly feed or support the troops in the field. The army simply tossed this multi-billion dollar boondoggle to KBR and hoped for the best. The military auditors began to bristle when the cost over run for both Iraq and Afghanistan ballooned to over $8.6 billion a year in January 2004. In classic corporate rip-off style, KBR billed the military $88 million for three million meals that were never served to soldiers. The Iraqi Central Bank lost millions of dollars. Payrolls were padded with hundreds of phantom employees on a local oil pipeline project to the tune of $3,379,505.

These are just a few examples. President Bush is still doing everything he can to keep the war alive. America must stay the course, not cut and run, not dishonor the troops, not give aid and comfort to the terrorists. And keep the cash coming for his friends and family. [This is problematic, though, because, as you’ve shown above, the U.S. is losing billions of dollars on the war. If you mean he personally (and/or the government) is collecting oil profits, or plans to, I think you need to state this more clearly].

As we used to say in the 82nd Airborne Division; our business is killing, and business is good. (sources for the following include: CPA Inspector General, Defense Contract Audit Agency, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, US House of Representatives, US General Accountability Office)

By Grady Hawkins

The reasons for the invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of its government and the resulting occupation have been many and varied. Initially, we were told that Saddam had enough weapons of mass destruction to turn America into one giant sheet of beaded glass. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons were supposedly anywhere and everywhere, and the Bush administration went out of its way to convince us that we were only forty-five minutes from another Hiroshima. In September 2002, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, then National Security Advisor, uttered her now famous phrase, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” on CNN’s Late Edition. During a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio on October 7th, 2002 President Bush claimed, “the Iraqi regime… possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, Sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.” Perhaps the most absurd claim of all was made by former general and Secretary of State Colin Powell, when he addressed the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 and said, “there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capacity to rapidly produce more, many more. And he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction. If biological weapons seem to terrible to contemplate, chemical weapons are equally chilling.”

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