Rumsfeld's $9 Billion Slush Fund

[NNN0LHI]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089674/

For all the debate over President Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for military operations and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, no one seems to have noticed that the sum includes a slush fund of at least $9.3 billion, which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can spend pretty much as he pleases.

Last week, the congressional armed services committees—and this week the House Appropriations Committee—marked up the supplemental, excising a few hundred million that Bush had requested for new hospitals, housing, and sanitation. But the committees didn't touch a nickel of the slush fund—and there's a cravenly wink-and-nudge reason why they didn't.

Most of the supplemental request is fairly straightforward: $32 billion to maintain the tempo of military operations, $18 billion for military personnel, $5.1 billion for security and a new Iraqi army, $5.7 billion for electrical power, and so forth.

But deep within, the document proposes the following allowance:

Not less than $1.4 billion, to remain available until expended, may be used, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for payments to reimburse Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations, for logistics, military and other support provided, or to be provided, to United States military operations.

First, look closely at those first three words: Not less than. In other words, Rumsfeld could transfer more than $1.4 billion for this purpose—how much more, who can say?...

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[proud patriot]

1. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

:mad: :grr: ffffffttt tttffppttt :grr: :mad:

[Jacobin]

2. Well, as long as they keep the $500,000 in there to build a fricking

Monument to the fricking INVASION on Iraqi soil, I guess all the bribe billions will be okay.

/sarcasm

[Hieronymus]

3. is Rummy still around?

He's a dead man walking in the administration. He's been invited to quit, but with his ego he can't do it.:kick:

[David Zephyr]

4. The Slate Article Says That "No One Seems to Have Noticed "

and that is because there has been and there will be no debate or study of the $87 Billion railroaded appropriation by Congress which is precisely why every Democrat should vote in unity against it.

[Jacobin]

5. and they just voted 95 to 0

commending themselves for saving the world from Saddam by invading and conquering and occupying Iraq.

I feel that i have no representation at all in congress, other than the black caucus in the HOuse.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. This deserves to be back on the front page

of GD, and all the newspapers too. More creative accounting by Republicans. Will we ever learn?

I think every pronouncement put out by the Bush administration needs to be exmained by a lawyer, looking for the half-truths and loopholes, and every budget plan by a team of accountants and lawyers who specialise in fraud detection - because that's what these sleazebags are trying to do, all the time. Defraud America, and fool the world.