Mystery of $6.6 billion lost in Iraq solved...Looky Dick we found it!

[Bo]

It's a rare day when positive news surfaces from the frontlines of Iraq's post-occupation government--or from its troubled economy. However, a U.S. Iraq inspector general report that concluded this week that $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped cash the U.S. government previously feared had gone missing in the chaotic early days of the Iraq occupation has in fact been safely accounted for.
"The mystery of $6 billion that seemed to go missing in the early days of the Iraq war has been resolved, according to a new report," CNN national security producer Charles Keyes reported Wednesday. "New evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR."
Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, had previously testified that as much as $6.6 billion of the $10 billion the United States shipped to Iraq had disappeared due to "weaknesses in financial and management controls," Keyes wrote, citing the bureaucratese from a previous SIGIR report.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/once-feared-lost-now-accounted-iraq-inspector-says-153935856.html

[Mnemosyne]

1. Why do I keep expecting to see Darth Cheney's pants? n/t

[underpants]

2. So ends the "They aren't good at accounting" Bush lie

That's was one of the worst doozies of the early occupation. THEY weren't doing the accounting - Heritage Foundation hires were.

[Scuba]

5. +1

[ellisonz]

3. Does this mean we get it back?

Give it to the National Park Service - they have a maintenance backlog of at least that amount!!!

;-)

[mattvermont]

4. Whew...and to think that

I suspected at one time that several years after the fact, there would be a minor article in some paper that would explain away the whole thing, thereby relieving anybody in charge from responsibility.
Oh...wait...a...minute....

[Old and In the Way]

8. Yeah, I thought the same thing.

And I think this is another "nothing to see here, move along" moment. The CPA was a wholly run political operation for Republicans only. Why US dollars? It's not like that was a usable currency in Iraq that could be easily accepted and traded...what business owner there wants to take a currency that he has no idea if it's fake or convertible?

This went down in the Spring of '04.I think a large chunk of the uncounted for cash made it's way back to the November election...because it takes a lot of untraceable cash to game a national election.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. Can we keep our Social Security now?

[baldguy]

7. I thought it was $8 billion?

[Huey P. Long]

9. Where is the 2.3 TRILLION missing from the Pentagon?