The US Treasury during the Bush administration seemed mystified.įormer Treasury Department officials also questioned the need for the flights. In the end, there has been little if any serious accountability for US funds sent to Iraq for reconstruction. Nor - in fact least of all - infamous Bush appointee in Iraq, Paul Bremer who headed up the agency responsible for the money.
Nor has the Obama administration followed through with an investigation. Bowen, Bush’s friend, was frustrated by the Bush administration’s unwillingness to actually pursue the losses and account for them. Much of the money was apparently rerouted out of Iraq. Bowen believed he might have succeeded - but only partly - in that mission. Before his office was finally shut down last year, Mr. Bush who in 2004 was appointed to serve as a special inspector general to investigate corruption and waste in Iraq. Bowen Jr., a friend from Texas of President George W. 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.įinding the answer became first the job and then the obsession of Stuart W. 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. The cash, withdrawn from Iraqi government accounts held in the United States, was loaded onto Air Force C-17 transport planes bound for Baghdad, where the Bush administration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. 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 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. James Risen writes in the New York Times today that it’s all over the place - and some has just turned up in Lebanon. Remember that $20 billion in cash, flown into Iraq by the Bush administration?