$700 Billion CASH found in Baghdad, Iraq

Vía: Chuckipita

This article was taken from a BBC news report in 2003.

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2988455.stm)

Some how, it has evolved into a monstrous conspiracy.

Last Updated: Wednesday, 30 April, 2003, 12:28 GMT 13:28 UK

Stash of money found in Baghdad

“Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” — Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Piles of cash seized in Iraq

Foreign currency worth nearly $700b has been found in a Baghdad neighbourhood, the US military say.

Troops found $100m and 90m euros in 31 containers, US Central Command said. After that, they located a deep vault over 8800 square feet which held strict cash in forms of major money blocks totalling a monstrous sum.

The money has been flown out of the country to a “secure location” for counting purposes and will eventually be returned to Iraq to help rebuild the country, the US said.

Last week, US troops found more than $650m in the same area of Baghdad.

Soldiers questioned

The latest banknotes were discovered between 23 and 26 April in an area of Baghdad secured by members of the US 3rd Infantry Division, according to a US statement.
The funds will eventually be returned to the Iraqis to help rebuild their nation
US Central Command

It did not specify exactly where the money was found, although the funds were said to have been kept in containers.

The statement said the containers were flown from Baghdad International Airport on Sunday under an escort of police officers, criminal investigators and financial experts.

“The money arrived at a secure location for counting purposes at approximately 1030 that morning,” the statement said.

“Soldiers of the unit in charge of the counting took approximately five hours to finish this count.

“Funds will remain secure until a stable government is established in Iraq and will ultimately be returned to the Iraqis to assist in the re-building of their nation.”

The funds which were found last week are also being held at an undisclosed location.

The money had been hidden behind the false wall of a house searched by US troops. It is thought the stash could have been left by fleeing regime leaders.

Five US soldiers are currently being questioned by military officials after some of that money was allegedly stolen following its discovery.

"War is Over! If You Want It"

From 'Peace on earth and goodwill toward whom?' by Edward M. Gomez

" ... The British writer Aldous Huxley, in his 1936 novel of ideas, Eyeless in Gaza, which features a lot of well-educated, well-dressed people sitting around talking, weighed in, indirectly, on that old bit of fortune-cookie wisdom that holds that, at any given time, a society gets the government it deserves. Huxley turned that thinking around and proposed that governments reflect "the attitudes and values of the peoples they represent. "Nations won't change their national policies unless and until people change their private polcies," he wrote, adding: "Today's national behavior [is] a large-scale projection of today's individual behavior."

"One of the great attractions of patriotism," Huxley observed, is that "it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat...with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. Sweet and decorous to murder, lie, torture for the sake of the fatherland. Good international policies are projections of individual good intentions and benevolent wishes and must be of the same kind as good inter-personal policies." So, what about demands for peace? "Pacifist propaganda must be aimed at people as well as [at] their governments," he wrote. Consciousness-raising about the importance and value of peace "must start simultaneously at the periphery and the center."

Is peace just a pipe dream for innocents, and is peace-making the time-wasting pursuit of fools? Not necessarily, Huxley - like the current pope - seemed to suggest. That's because, he argued, there are certain "empirical facts," as he called them, about people that just might equip them to make peace a reality. For starters, Huxley noted, sounding papal, "We are all capable of love for other human beings." His second "empirical fact": "We impose limitations on that love." His third: "We can transcend all these limitations - if we choose to." (Fast-forward to Christmas 1969, when John Lennon and Yoko Ono unveiled their "War is Over! If You Want It" billboards in major cities around the world. Their message about collective will having the power to shape reality was the same one.) ..."

Bush could double force by Christmas

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- a record-high number -- by the end of the year.

The numbers were arrived at by an analysis of deployment orders by Hearst Newspapers.

"It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

The first surge was prominently announced by President Bush in a nationally televised address on Jan. 10, when he ordered five more combat brigades to join 15 brigades already in Iraq.

The buildup was designed to give commanders the 20 combat brigades Pentagon planners said were needed to provide security in Baghdad and western Anbar province.

Since then, the Pentagon has extended combat tours for units in Iraq from 12 months to 15 months and announced the deployment of additional brigades.

Taken together, the steps could put elements of as many as 28 combat brigades in Iraq by Christmas, according the deployment orders examined by Hearst Newspapers.

Army spokesman Lt. Col. Carl S. Ey said there was no effort by the Army to carry out "a secret surge" beyond the 20 combat brigades ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

"There isn't a second surge going on; we've got what we've got," Ey said. "The idea that there are ever going to be more combat brigades in theater in the future than the secretary of defense has authorized is pure speculation."

Ey attributed the increase in troops to "temporary increases that typically occur during the crossover period" as arriving combat brigades move into position to replace departing combat brigades.

He said that only elements of the eight additional combat brigades beyond the 20 already authorized would actually be in Iraq in December.

The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., that tracks combat forces heading to and returning from Iraq, declined to discuss unit-by-unit deployments.

"Due to operational security, we cannot confirm or discuss military unit movements or schedules," Navy Lt. Jereal Dorsey said in an e-mail.

The Pentagon has repeatedly extended unit tours in Iraq during the past four years to achieve temporary increases in combat power. For example, three combat brigades were extended up to three months in November 2004 to boost the number of U.S. troops from 138,000 to 150,000 before, during and after the Jan. 30, 2005, Iraqi national elections.

Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary for manpower during the Reagan administration, said the Pentagon deployment schedule enables the Bush administration to achieve quick increases in combat forces in the future by delaying units' scheduled departures from Iraq and overlapping them with arriving replacement forces.

"The administration is giving itself the capability to increase the number of troops in Iraq," Korb said. "It remains to be seen whether they actually choose to do that."

Nash said the capability could reflect an effort by the Bush administration to "get the number of troops into Iraq that we've needed there all along."

Pentagon limits web for troops

Washington - Lieutenant Daniel Zimmerman, a US army infantry platoon leader in Iraq, puts a blog on the internet every now and then "to basically keep my friends and family up to date" back home.

It just got tougher to do that for Zimmerman and a lot of other US soldiers. No more using the military's computer system to socialise and trade videos on MySpace, YouTube and nine other websites, the Pentagon says.

Citing security worries and technological limits, the Defence Department has cut off access to those sites for personnel using the Pentagon's computer network.

"I put my blog on there, and my family reads it," said Zimmerman, 29, a platoon leader with B Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment.

"I keep it as vague as possible," he said. "I'm pretty responsible about it. It's just basically to tell a little bit about my life over here," he said.

Private accounts

He is regularly at a base where he does not have Defence Department access to the internet, but he has used it when he goes to bigger bases. He will have to rely always on a private account now.

Memos about the change went out in February, and it took effect last week. It does not affect internet cafes that soldiers in Iraq use that are not connected to the Defence network. The cafe sites are run by a private vendor, FUBI (For US By Iraqis).

The ban does not affect other sites, such as Yahoo, and does not prevent soldiers from sending messages and photos to their families by e-mail.

Internet use has become a troublesome issue for the military as it struggles to balance security with privacy rights. As blogs and video-sharing become more common, the military has voiced increasing worries about service members revealing details of military operations or other information about equipment or procedures that could aid the fighters on the other side.

At the same time, service members have used the websites to chronicle their time in battle, posting videos and writing journals that provide powerful personal glimpses into their days at war.

Waivers allowed

After the warnings of the shutdown went out, military members were allowed to seek waivers if the sites were necessary for their jobs.

Often insurgent groups post videos, including ones of attacks or, in some high-profile cases, of US or coalition soldiers who have been captured or killed.

If the restrictions are intended to prevent soldiers from giving or receiving bad news, they could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field, said Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired Magazine.

"This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets," he said, "and they are muzzling their best voices."

The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos and FileCabi; social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5; music sites Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and live365; and the photo-sharing site Photobucket

Senators Prepare for Vote On War Funding Legislation

The Senate will vote this week on cutting off funding for the Iraq war and on bringing troops home by next spring, but neither outcome will be the final say in the standoff between Congress and the White House.
Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said yesterday that those questions will be tacked on to unrelated water-resources legislation. They may also carry only symbolic value. The votes would allow debate on the issue without tying up a separate $124 billion war funding bill, which Democrats hope to pass before the Memorial Day holiday.
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One amendment, co-sponsored by Reid and Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), a leading antiwar Democrat, would cut off funding for the war as of March 31, 2008. The other, offered by Armed Services Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and also endorsed by Reid, would mirror language that President Bush has already vetoed, requiring U.S. troops to begin leaving Iraq as of Oct. 1, with a goal of completing combat withdrawals by March 31, 2008. To broaden the measure's appeal with Republicans, Levin added a crucial caveat: Under certain circumstances, Bush could waive the dates.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino reiterated yesterday that Bush opposes any timeline for troop withdrawals.
Last week, the House approved a spending bill that would provide only enough money for the war to continue through July -- a timetable widely opposed in the Senate as too short-term. Many Republicans and Democrats agree that the war's make-or-break moment will come in the fall, when U.S. commanders assess the effects of a troop escalation currently underway.
In the Senate, consensus is building behind setting political and legislative benchmarks for the Iraqi government, with some sort of consequences, including possible troop withdrawals, if the terms are not met.
Yet many Democrats also want to continue applying pressure for a complete U.S. withdrawal -- if only symbolically.
"The American people deserve to have the Senate go on record about whether or not it wants to end our misguided mission in Iraq and safely redeploy our brave troops," Feingold said.
Reid stressed that his party's objective had not changed. "Democrats believe they should do something very, very close to what was done in the bill that was sent to the president to be vetoed," Reid said. But he said he had not resolved how to move the spending legislation forward.

Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute to be 'war czar'

After a protracted search, President Bush has selected an Army lieutenant general to be his war czar in charge of overseeing the strife in Iraq and Afghanistan.

White House officials said Tuesday that Bush tapped Lt. Gen. Douglas E Lute for the new position. The job was created to consolidate authority in one person for coordination of the war efforts and to ease conflicts between the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved.

Lute, a three-star general, will have the titles of assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan policy implementation. It was unclear Tuesday whether Lute would report directly to Bush or to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
Lute's selection will take pressure off of Hadley, who had the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts on his plate along with virtually all other pressing foreign issues, such as the nuclear standoffs with North Korea and Iran.

Lute, 54, of Michigan City, Ind., has served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff since September. Before that, he was stationed at U.S. Central Command, overseeing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan

He has earned degrees from both West Point and Harvard University and is widely respected in the Pentagon for intellect and understanding of the intricacies of the Middle East. He is unapologetically frank about the situation in Iraq; often willing to point out that operations could fail or that Iraqis may not meet U.S. expectations.
Indeed, in an interview with McClatchy Newspapers last month, Lute said that U.S. officials must make sure that Iraqi forces step up during the surge into Baghdad.
"We are looking for indicators where we can assess the extent to which we are fighting alongside Iraqi security forces, not as a replacement to them," he said during that interview.
Lute's selection ends a long search by the White House for a war czar. Some military officials approached about the job said they weren't interested.