Nothin' to see here, folks

It came out this week that, in regard to the $9 billion that "somehow got lost" in Iraq, Dubya issued one of his patented (and patently unconsitutional) "signing statements" that effectively nullified the creation of an inspector general to look into these missing billions.

The rationale, posted on the whitehouse.gov site, is breathtaking in its chutzpah. It cites "the President’s constitutional authorities to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs [independent of interference from any other branch of government, and without any consideration whatsoever of the popular will], to supervise the unitary executive branch [who say's it's "unitary"? The preznit does], and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces [ironic that, given his track record of military service, no?].

Let's get this straight. One of the [750 or so!] acts passed by Congress the president chose to ignore was the one establishing the inspector general post for Iraq. Did anyone notice this? Well, not really. Or at least no one did anything about it. Remember this is $9 billion dollars that went poof!

Why isn't Bush eager for anyone to follow the money? As Dave Lindorff writes:

You might think that the inspector general himself would have complained about such a restriction on his authority to do the job that Congress had intended, but this is a man who has a long history of working as a loyal manservant to the president. Bowen was a deputy general counsel for Governor Bush (meaning he was an assistant to the ever solicitous solicitor Alberto Gonzales). He did yeoman service to Bush as a member of the team that handled the famous vote count atrocity in Florida in the November 2000 election, making sure every vote wasn't counted, and then worked under Gonzales again in the White House during Bush's first term, before returning briefly to private practice.

Bowen simply never mentioned to anyone that, courtesy of an unconstitutional order from the president, he was not doing the job that Congress had intended.

The deception was far-reaching. When Thomas Gimble, the acting inspector general of the Pentagon, was asked in 2005 during a congressional hearing by Christopher Shays (R-CT), chair of the House government reform subcommittee, why the Pentagon had no audit team in Iraq to look for fraud, the facile Gimble replied that such a team was "not needed" because Congress had set up the special inspector general unit to do that. He conveniently didn't mention that the president had barred the special inspector general from investigating Pentagon scandals.

Lindorff goes on to speculate where that money actually went.

[M]oney being like water, it tends to flow to the lowest level, which, from a moral and ethical standpoint, would be the Bush/Cheney administration and the Republican Party machine that put them, and the do-nothing Congress that covers up for them, into office.

My guess is that a fair piece of those many billions of dollars is sloshing around back in the U.S. paying for things like Republican Party electoral dirty tricks, vote theft, bribing of Democratic members of Congress, and god knows what else.

If this seems far-fetched to anyone, remember that this administration has included a number of people who were linked to the Reagan-era Iran-Contra scandal, when the creative--and criminal--idea was conceived of secretly selling Pentagon stocks of shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, and using the proceeds to secretly fund the U.S.-trained and organized Contra fighters who were fighting to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua (Congress had inconveniently banned any U.S. aid to the Contras).

Read the whole piece...

Is Lindorff onto something, or is this just idle speculation? I have no idea, but I'm just a 14th rate blogger with a day job. But there are people? they're called journalists? investigative journalists? They might find this an interesting topic to pursue. Or not. I'm just sayin'