UPDATED TEXT WITH PODCAST...

BIGGEST HEIST IN HISTORY...

From a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Q&A early February '07

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: Little more than a year, $12 billion in US currency removed from the vaults of the Federal Reserve and flown into Iraq, this money, mainly $100 bills, were packed into bricks, and each brick was worth $400,000 each. And I think we have a picture of the bricks on the screen. They were assembled into large palettes containing over $60 million in cash and flown into Iraq. In December 2003, Ambassador Bremer and the Coalition Provision Authority asked for a shipment of $1.5 billion to be flown into Iraq, and a Federal Reserve official described this in an email as the largest payout of US currency in US history. But this didn't remain the largest for very long, because in June, $2.4 billion was sent to Iraq, and this time the Federal Reserve official wrote, quote, “Just when you think you've seen it all, the CPA is ordering $2,401,600,000 in currency.”

Well, the question this committee is trying to answer is, what happened to the money? Was it spent responsibility? Was it misspent? Was it wasted? Did it go out to pay off corrupt officials? Or, worst of all, did some of this money get in the hands of the insurgents and those who are fighting us today in Iraq? Ambassador Bremer, are you concerned about the possibility that some of this money went to ghost employees -- we don’t know where it went -- and might be showing up in the hands of insurgents that are fighting US troops?

PAUL BREMER: If there were evidence of that, I would certainly be concerned.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN: We don’t know whether there’s evidence of it, but we don’t --

PAUL BREMER: I don’t know.

IRAQI LEADERS STOLE LITERALLY TONS OF AMERICAN CASH...BUT WHO REALLY PLANNED THE CAPER..?

Hazem Shaalan former Iraqi Defense Minister is living like a potentate on hundreds of millions, possibly billions of stolen American money... He travels freely between exotic destinations jet-setting with the beautiful people...An expatriate living in splendor... A James Bond-like nemesis surrounded by a squad of body guards, chauffeurs , and servants attending to the minute to minute needs of his exotic entourage...

The money Shaalan looted was earmarked to buy weapons to kill Iranian terrorists who were killing American soldiers in Iraq...Who appointed Shaaln and why?.. And was this an inside job cooked up in America...

Before the Iraqi invasion, Shaalan lived in London, broker than a baseball bat doing odd jobs... But that changed when Hussein was toppled because high government official(s) in America elevated this man with zero experience as Defense Minister of Iraq...

His stellar rise compares to Bernard Kerik's political rags to riches story from jailkeep to chauffeur to NY Police Commissioner to Iraq police consultant to Department of Homeland Security Chief For-A-Day...Kerik's unprecedented ascendancy was the doings of his boss, the much married cross-dressing crimebuster Rudy Giuliani ...(forgive the diversion)

In 2005, not even a year after Shaalan's appointment, the Minister left Baghdad ahead of the posse successfully pulling off the biggest heist in history...Was Shaalan the fall guy for his US sponsors?..Did these "sponsors" get paid?..Or were they stiffed?..

According to US investigators and timeoflondon.com, 360 tons of shrink wrapped blocks of $100 bills totaling $12 billion were loaded onto pallets and taken from the Federal Reserve in New York then Berlin-airlifted into Baghdad. ...Most of this money disappeared...

According to the timesonline.com $1.7 billion went into one account in Baghdad then got siphoned into another in Jordan...

The little bit of money Shaalan didn't steal wound in the pocket of a shady businessman named Ziyad Cattan who suppled outdated junk weaponry at full quality price then pocketed the difference...

Quotes from timesonline.com:

"the latest MP5 American machine guns were ordered at a cost of $3,500 each. But what was delivered were Egyptian copies worth $200 per gun."

"...the immediate impact was that the Iraqi army was woefully unprepared to tackle an increasingly savage and well armed insurgency, just at the time when the Americans were pressing for the national force to start replacing their own troops. Iraqi soldiers found that they were ambushed by insurgents with far better weapons than their own."

"Mr Shalaan says that Paul Bremer, then US viceroy in Iraq, signed off the appointment of Ziyad Cattan as the defence ministry's procurement chief. Mr Cattan, of joint Polish-Iraqi nationality, spent 27 years in Europe, returning to Iraq two days before the war in 2003. He was hired by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and became a district councillor before moving to the defence ministry. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authrity (CPA) who presided over the disbursement of much of the American cash..."

NOTE: Mr Cattan's business experience includes running pizzeria in Poland and operating a used car lot in Germany...

How many American soldiers needlessly died protecting Iraqi nationals who were poorly armed because their leaders stole an entire country blind?.. Joe Webb

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