I'm watching the hearings on SeeSpam, and it seems one Republican tactic is to say that managing the reconstruction and keeping track of all that money was "too hard," and that we shouldn't be mean to Bremer, because it was a job that was just really, really tough and he's a nice guy and will you just stop picking on him already, he's going to cry!
I don't think much of this will make the TeeVee news, but there are plenty of choice quotes that Democrats seem happy to throw in various Republican faces at this point. If you enjoy this sort of squirming, take a gander. The look on Bremer's face is priceless. I'm just sorry Rummy isn't up there with him.
Rep. Watson (you go girl) gave him a really hard time. She asked where the money went, and he said, "mostly to the (expenses of) the Iraqi government." Interesting. There must be a lot of very rich Iraqi politicians out there today, given the billions and billion that the CPA spent. You tax dollars at work!
Rep. Fairyfingers Shays: "I never saw a cushy job in Iraq!" Again with the "it was hard, so we don't blame you for losing all that money" line. Pitiful.
Shays is parroting someone earlier on the Republican side, and blaming the Iraqis for losing all that nice money we gave them, or running off with it. "It's not our fault, the sand niggrahs done run off wit it!"
Dennis: Uh oh, he's getting specific on them. Asking Bremer about 1/2billion spent in 04 on "security." Bremer claiming he doesn't know the specifics of it, asks to see it up close. Bremer asks to answer in writing later. Dennis hitting back with PRB meeting minutes, and our Coalition allies at the meeting bitching about the "lack of specificity" in allocation of funds. Dennis calling out Bremer for not reading minutes of meetings in which monies were spent.
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The needle that will prick the Republican sack of pus
I really think it's going to be oversight of the money. Honestly, how can the anti-Democrats "support the troops" when everything they set up is an unbelievably crass ripoff?
More details, please! Any dirt on the CPA?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
most stuff we've known for a while
sigh, we need to take lessons from the brits about making gov't more exciting to watch live.
keep in mind, this is bremer they're grilling- so they have to keep questions mostly concerned with CPA mismanagment, not what's happening now. and 1/2 the reps asking questions are republicans, who seem to have one of two approaches here: "it was hard" and "blame the iraqis." dem questions are pretty good, everyone seems to have a favorite moment in oversight to ask about, but bremer's answers don't satisfy.
what is nice is watching him squirm. he should be in jail, but i suppose this is the best we can do.
don't think for a minute that either party will go into the real dirt, although i thought dennis came close. mostly, those who are asking "hard kwestions" are avoiding the corollary: who really did get all this money? that would be a show, but we won't see it today.
The kind of lead we like to see
AP:
The former U.S. occupation chief in
Iraq on Tuesday defended the way he haphazardly doled out billions of dollars in Iraqi funds after the U.S. invasion as Democrats began a two-year effort to scrutinize fraud, waste and abuse under the Bush administration.
More:
I've always thought that if we simply airdropped a few billion dollars into Iraq we would have gotten far better results than with the trillion dollars we spend on the war.
Here's the laughable Republican defense:
Oh, so that makes it OK?
Gosh, $8.5 billion "lost" is a lot, even by Republican standards. I wonder where it went?
NOTE Funny how the Republican defense for this is that Iraq was a war zone and everything had collapsed. I thought it was supposed to be a cakewalk?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.