US Taxpayers Spent Billions on an Iraqi Army With 50,000 ‘Ghost’ Soldiers
By Nick Sorrentino on December 1, 2014
The original headline for the attached article is, The Bush Administration Spent Billions on an Iraqi Army With 50,000 ‘Ghost’ Soldiers.
Anyone who reads us knows that we have no love for the Bush Administration which as far as we are concerned was just the first half of the BOBAMA era aka OBOMBYA era. But the attached story does not indicate that ONLY the Bush administration allocated billions for phantom Iraqi soldiers. I am pretty sure there are and were plenty of “ghost soldiers” in Iraq over the past 6 years too.
That being said, and that major mistake by the author of the article noted, the news is still important.
War is hell, foggy, and expensive. This is doubly true in the Middle East.
- (From JuanCole.com)
- The Bush Administration spent something like $800 billion in direct costs on the Iraq War, including $20 billion for rebuilding the Iraqi Army after viceroy Paul Bremer abolished . . . the Iraqi Army in 2003. When health care for wounded veterans over their lifetimes is figured in, some suggest the war will have cost trillions of dollars. It is not clear what the US received from that investment. Not security. The Baghdad government is de facto allied with Iran. And the Obama administration has deemed Daesh so much a threat to US national security that President Obama felt it necessary to send the Air Force back in to bomb the country in 2014! The Bush senior administration bombed Iraq in 1991, and the Clinton administration bombed it in 1998. So, in other words, invading and occupying the country seems to have had very little impact on whether it represents a threat to US security in Washington’s eyes, or whether the US feels the need to bomb it..
- The $800 bn was largely wasted or stolen. If you want to find it, get a shovel and dig around in back yards in Fairfax County, to which ex-US officials and contractors involved in looting both countries tend to retire.*
- The Bush Administration spent something like $800 billion in direct costs on the Iraq War, including $20 billion for rebuilding the Iraqi Army after viceroy Paul Bremer abolished . . . the Iraqi Army in 2003. When health care for wounded veterans over their lifetimes is figured in, some suggest the war will have cost trillions of dollars. It is not clear what the US received from that investment. Not security. The Baghdad government is de facto allied with Iran. And the Obama administration has deemed Daesh so much a threat to US national security that President Obama felt it necessary to send the Air Force back in to bomb the country in 2014! The Bush senior administration bombed Iraq in 1991, and the Clinton administration bombed it in 1998. So, in other words, invading and occupying the country seems to have had very little impact on whether it represents a threat to US security in Washington’s eyes, or whether the US feels the need to bomb it..
*Though there is plenty in Fairfax as we have noted in the past, those taxpayer dollars have been spread throughout the Middle East and Europe as well.
http://www.againstcronycapitalism.org/2014/12/the-us-spent-billions-on-an-iraqi-army-with-50000-ghost-soldiers/ --
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