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CPA Officials Posing with $2 Million in Cash

 
Twenty billion dollars, you read it well! Even in military accounting terms, that’s a lot of toilet seats. A tale of total incompetence; as a script it probably would have been turned down by Hollywood for being totally unbelievable (until now).

But was it really incompetence? In a February 2007 very well documented report by the U.S. House Oversight Committee, the story feels more like a well-organized heist. (1)
When we invaded Iraq in 2003 we stopped the U.N. oil-for-food program and “froze” the money. While “democracy was being established” in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority ran the country while elections were held.
Paul Bremer was then the head of the CPA. But before the “elected” government was put in place, $20 Billion of that money were flown back to Iraq and disbursed in total disregard of all the rules in place. Of this amount, $12 Billion were in cash; $100.00 bills were packed in “bricks” of $400,000.00 and much of it was given away with almost no record of who got the money. That story keeps reoccurring in and out of the news and keeps vanishing. (2)
It seems like it deserved a little more attention than that, so Vanity Fair finally resurrected it. (3)
In most articles, $9 Billion is the amount that is not accounted for. But according to the House Oversight Committee, the whole $20 Billion is questioned.

However there is one question that is not raised in any of theses stories. That money from the oil-for-food program was supposed to belong to the Iraqi people. The justification for spending it is that “it was given back to the Iraqis”. There is just one problem with that: the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was NOT the Iraqi government, as its name indicates. Elections were held and an Iraqi government (however legitimate it was) was about to be put in place. So did the CPA have the legal authority to spend that money?

Reference report and articles:

(1) - U.S. House of Representatives report. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, February 2007 report. This is a PDF document, so it takes a few seconds to download, but it’s worth the reading. http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20070206130101-80952.pdf

(2) – Some of the stories that appeared over the years. An August 20, 2004 Fox News story. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129489,00.html

One of the first in-depth stories was made in December 2004 by the Revenue Watch Institute (IraqRevenueWatch.org) http://www.iraqrevenuewatch.org/reports/120604.shtml

The Global Policy Forum made a report on it.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/dfiindex.htm

In July 2005, it was in the Guardian: So, Mr. Bremer, where did all the money go?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1522983,00.html

(3)- The Vanity Fair article: Now this story is finally coming back, thanks to two Pulitzer Prize winning reporters. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710

Additional links :

What was this money used for? It certainly didn’t go for Iraq reconstruction.

Washington Post April 2007 article: U.S. Rebuilding in Iraq Is Missing Key Goals, Report Finds http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR200704...

A Wall Street Journal article (April 28, 2004) that, with hindsight, could be hilarious if the whole deal wasn’t so sordid. It depicts Saddam Hussein as a terrible man for doing basically… what Paul Bremer did!
Oil-for-Terror
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110005011