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We're sending the Musharraff $100 million a month -- in cash?!?!

Wed, 11/07/2007 - 9:23pm — lambert

TPM:

In fact, however, a considerable amount of the money the U.S. gives to Pakistan is administered not through U.S. agencies or joint U.S.-Pakistani programs. Instead, the U.S. gives Musharraf's government about $200 million annually and his military $100 million monthly in the form of direct cash transfers. Once that money leaves the U.S. Treasury, Musharraf can do with it whatever he wants. He needs only promise in a secret annual meeting that he'll use it to invest in the Pakistani people. And whatever happens as the result of Rice's review, few Pakistan watchers expect the cash transfers to end.

Well, that's sorted, then. But here's what I want to know:

Who's in the administration taking a cut of that untraceable $100 million as a kickback? And what are they doing with it?

Sure, it's small potatoes compared to the $8.6 billion "lost" in Iraq, but "waste not, want not," eh?

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