Remember that $20 billion in cash, flown into Iraq by the Bush administration? [icopyright one button toolbar]

Well, they still can’t account for it. James Risen writes in the New York Times today that it’s all over the place — and some has just turned up in Lebanon. The sources of some of that money for reconstruction were the accounts of Saddam’s government in the US which the US then shipped back to Iraq to fund its new government.

Not long after American forces defeated the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein in 2003, caravans of trucks began to arrive at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on a regular basis, unloading an unusual cargo — pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills. The cash, withdrawn from Iraqi government accounts held in the United States, was loaded onto Air Force C-17 transport planes bound for Baghdad, where the Bush administration hoped it would provide a quick financial infusion for Iraq’s new government and the country’s battered economy.

Over the next year and a half, $12 billion to $14 billion was sent to Iraq in the airlift, and an additional $5 billion was sent by electronic transfer. Exactly what happened to that money after it arrived in Baghdad became one of the many unanswered questions from the chaotic days of the American occupation, when billions were flowing into the country from the United States and corruption was rampant.

Finding the answer became first the job and then the obsession of Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a friend from Texas of President George W. Bush who in 2004 was appointed to serve as a special inspector general to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq. Before his office was finally shut down last year, Mr. Bowen believed he might have succeeded — but only partly — in that mission. …NYT

Much of the money was apparently rerouted out of Iraq. Bowen, Bush’s friend, was frustrated by the Bush administration’s unwillingness to actually pursue the losses and account for them.

Nor has the Obama administration followed through with an investigation. Nor, in fact, has the Iraqi government. Nor — in fact least of all — infamous Bush appointee in Iraq, Paul Bremer who headed up the agency responsible for the money. In the end, there has been little if any serious accountability for US funds sent to Iraq for reconstruction.

The US Treasury during the Bush administration seemed mystified.

Former Treasury Department officials also questioned the need for the flights. Treasury had already sent $1.7 billion in cash from Iraqi government accounts in the United States to Baghdad in the first weeks after the invasion, and then had developed a new Iraqi currency that was introduced that October. They say the new currency ended the need for further cash infusions from the United States.

“We did not know that Bremer was flying in all that cash,” said Ged Smith, who was the head of the Treasury Department team that worked on Iraq’s financial reconstruction after the invasion. “I can’t see a reason for it.” …NYT

Shhh. Don’t ask. Don’t tell.

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Does this go a long way to explaining Obama’s DOJ pursuit, over the years, of James Risen? Risen, you’ll remember, has been dogged by an effort to make him reveal his sources. Apparently DOJ is easing up.

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If we were to grab George W. Bush, turn him upside down and shake him, would we be able to pay off the remainder of the deficit with what falls from his pockets?

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NB: The chicken-hawk right has sometimes been as critical of the absence of accountability for “reconstruction” funds as the left.

Cross-posted from Prairie Weather

graphic via shutterstock.com