$8,000,000,000?

Heck, that doesn't even cover W's bar bill!

What did Alan Greenspan say?

Anyone who thinks the Iraq War is not about oil is an idiot.

Or as the European say, "EEE-diot!"

Wow...it's stories like this one that make me want to go off the deep end and become a wacko tax protestor.

On September 10th, 2001 - that's right, the day before 9/11 - Donald Rumsfeld took to the podium and reported that 25% of the military budget just goes somewhere and vanishes. "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted. So while it's outrageous what happened here with the 8 billion, it's like Bill Gates looking for a twenty in the couch.

That money went a long way towards buying weapons to use against us.

This Vanity Fair article is dated October 2007, but I first heard of this a couple years ago. It wasn't widely reported, and it certainly didn't make the evening news.

Excuse me, but $9 Billion is not sofa cushion money, even if the Defense Dept spends trillions annually. It's always hilarious that so many so-called 'financial conservatives' in the GOP choose to ignore their party actually hemorrhages money when in power. Folks, that $9 Billion on pallets was visible from space... like the Great Wall.

And if a Democrat had initiated a cluster***k of an unnecessary war and lost that much money, I guarantee you he'd be vilified in the media and in D.C. If the IRS lost that much taxpayer money, Republicans in Washington would use it as an opportunity to vilify all government operations and handicap IRS' ability to collect in the future.

And yet, this real example that absolutely reeks of inside job manages barely a blip. The Iraq invasion was about oil... but Cheney and the neocon profiteers, doling out billions of dollars to friends in the industry is just an added bonus. Yay Democracy! Or is this just the old USSR?

IMPEACH these criminals. Now.

I was in a loud, not angry, argument last week. About millions, billions, trillions.
It was argued that the Oregon Lottery proceeds are 100 percent entirely 'earmarked' for schools, and that political sleights of hand which partition some percentages to 'other uses' is the (main) reason our schools are underfunded and failing to educate (children). My position was (and is) that Oregon Lottery 'issues' are too paltry to sidetrack investment of greater concern.

Two days later, I thought of 'what I shoulda said.' What does the Lottery contribute into the General Fund, or Education Funding, or whatever its designated 'earmark' is, $10 million a week? Did it contribute $500 million last year? I believe I heard a number in that range, 200 - 800 million, yet if so, it probably was a biennium figure, so one year is half of that.

Wacky Iraqiness is pushing $3 billion a week! Oregon's standard one-percent (of USA population and taxes), amounts to $30 million a week!, of $3 billion. That is where Oregonian taxpayers are bled dry into. That is the main reason schools are underfunded and failing to educate children.

Yeah, politicians could almost pooh-pooh disregard $10 billion ($100 million of it Oregonians') disappearing off of pallets as a one-time anomaly, (although 10,000 people would be instant millionaires), when those same politicians must cover a continuing nut of $3 billion-a-week. Going on five years, now!

And that is what must stop, and that is what our only and central concern must be until it IS stopped -- put those politicians out of our misery.

And honed rhetoric is sharper and sharper on that point, as our individual and combined efforts must follow, such as in this: today's Call to Action "The torture, the wars, the spying and theocratic measures and the toxic waves of bigotry ... isn’t “limping to the finish”…it is intensifying. The Bush Regime must be driven out."

From what I've read, two or three Middle East countries have been printing $100 bills that are virtually indistinguishable from the ones our own government produces. Therefore, maybe this shipment of currency to Iraq wasn't necessary anyway.

But if it's true that these other countries are liberally printing US money, it sure explains why the world is awash with dollars and why the stock and real estate markets have done so well in recent years.