In Monday’s Independent Patrick Cockburn reported on the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) report suggesting that as much as $125 billion might have been stolen from both Iraqi and American funds allocated for reconstruction. The thefts were carried out with the collusion of senior US military personnel. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1622987.html. Readers of TAC might recall that the story of Iraq corruption was first aired in an article I wrote in October 2005. At that time the money stolen was in the range of $30 billion, but it was early days and obviously the crooks have since refined their techniques. $125 billion might be on the low side. As Cockburn notes, in spite of huge sums contracted for reconstruction no cranes or signs of work can be seen in Baghdad. If the numbers prove accurate, the theft would be three times larger than the ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff. As near as I can tell, the Cockburn story has not been replayed in the MSM in the US, though it has been discussed by Juan Cole.
Iraq is only part of the story. Recently retired intelligence officers have been actively engaged in this wholesale plundering of central Asia in addition to Iraq. Intelligence officers have the unique ability to exploit multinational contacts to move commodities and money across borders clandestinely, a key element in laundering proceeds.
The real problem is that much of the United States goverment has, over the past eight years, become a kleptocracy in which former senior officials believe themselves entitled to a golden parachute when they leave government service. The list of Pentagon officials, military officers, and intelligence types who have become very rich is long and becoming longer. Many are affiliated to consulting groups headed by prominent figures from both Democratic and Republican administrations. Some of the names would surprise you.
Jack Tracey 
Thomas O. Meehan 
Philip Giraldi 
eep 
This post, along with the Dineen one below it and recent ones by Buchanan, illuminate why the connection between conservatives and the Republican Party must end. It is now clear that small government cannot regulate big business and protect the public from it, and that government and business left to themselves will corrupt both our financial system and also our military culture. In addition, the narrative about imperial overstretch does indeed converge with what the New Left was saying in the Sixties. It is ridiculous to think that the Republican remnant in the former Confederacy is at any point going to reverse its belief in the essentially militaristic model of business and warfare. Best for those who have some understanding of these things to get inside the Democratic tent and make a difference on a policy level, rather than allying themselves on the outside with the dead-enders… exemplified most recently by the House Republicans… who either believe, or cynically affect, the notion that we have some divine imperial right to make money by allowing lobbying and revolving-door policies to combine with arms-merchant global aggression, and that that is what God wants and is the essence of America. This is ridiculous, and it is Bush Republicanism, and it is the continuation of the Confederacy by other means, and it is neither conservative nor patriotic.