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by Free Market Duck

Billions Flushed Down Political Toilet in Afghanistan

 Edited/Annotated from D. Froomkin’s article at the Huffington Post by FM Duck

Dec 05, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC – Shut up, pull up the barn floor, and pour yourselves another hot cup of Rocket Java, girl friends.  While we totally disagree with most of the crap reported by the national socialists at the Huffington Post news rag, we are not against reporting their mostly quotes of other news media’s revelations of the massive money laundering in Afghanistan.

   So, listen up, girl friends and read the following info from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and WikiLeaks:

   The revelation that Afghanistan's vice president was caught carrying $52 million in cash last year in a Persian Gulf tax haven (and was allowed to keep it) is only the latest bit of evidence that countless billions of U.S. taxpayer money have been wasted in Afghanistan due to mismanagement, fraud and endemic corruption.

   The latest disclosure comes courtesy of the international whistleblower website WikiLeaks, which is in the process of releasing more than a quarter million State Department cables. As The New York Times reported:

   “When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, ‘was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination.’ (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)”

   Yes, that's "a significant amount" of money by normal standards. But by Afghan standards, it's actually small change. The U.S. is spending more than $2 billion a week – that’s $104 billion a year -- in a country with a gross domestic product of about $14 billion a year-- and a lot of it isn't going where it's supposed to. Here is a look at some other examples of the vast waste of U.S. taxpayer money in Afghanistan.

   The Wall Street Journal reported in June that more than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years -- “packed into suitcases, piled onto pallets and loaded into airplanes.”  Only so much of that could be drug money. The bulk, presumably, was skimmed from U.S. aid and logistics spending.

   And that’s just what people are declaring. The Journal calculated the $3 billion figure based on Afghan customs records, noting: “More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide.”

   The actual amount of money flown out of the country is, of course, higher. As the Journal noted: “One courier alone carried $2.3 billion between the second half of 2008 and the end of 2009, said a senior U.S. official, citing other documents that are in the possession of investigators.”

   The New York Times reported in August 2010:

   The flow of capital out of Afghanistan is so large that it makes up a substantial portion of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. In an interview, a United Arab Emirates customs official said it received about $1 billion from Afghanistan in 2009. But the American official said the amount might be closer to $2.5 billion.

   So those of you who still think America’s troops are running around in Iraq and Afghanistan to “save” us all from The Terrorists, should re-think their position.  The Terrorists were, and still are, manufactured by both the Bush and Obama Administration’s central bankers whose main goal is to continue securing and financing their Petro Dollars.  The central bankers’ secondary goal is to finance both sides of the War in the Middle East as they “loan” non-backed pulp fiction dollars to the U.S. Government – some $600 billion a year plus interest – and at least 35 foreign banks, some of whom route that hyper-inflated money back around to our so-called “enemies.”

   The American taxpayer is being duped or simply run over by the Federal Reserve monetary bulldozer as the bankers pretend to “stimulate” the U.S. economy by injecting trillions upon trillions of dollars into our National Debt.  The Afghanistan toilet bowl -- into which $104 billion a year is being thrown down the drain to pay off crooked foreign politicians to pretend we are fighting a War Against Terrorism-- is just the tip of the monetary iceberg that Fed Chief Ben Bernanke and President Barrack Obama are pilfering from us and our children and grandchildren.  The only thing Americans are paying for are the unfortunate deaths of our fine military men and women who are being forced to sacrifice themselves to subsidize Middle Eastern politicians buying new shoes, cars, boats, airplanes, and luxurious lifestyles on some Greek or Caribbean Island. – FM Duck

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