Fiscal Responsibility Only Applies To, Um, Not Us

Digby reminds us again why Republicans should never be allowed near anything important. Ever. Period.

From the "why are we listening to them?" files:

The reconstruction effort, intended to improve services and convince Iraqis of American good will, largely managed to do neither. The wider investigation raises the question of whether American corruption was a primary factor in damaging an effort whose failures have been ascribed to poor planning and unforeseen violence.

The investigations, which are being conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Justice Department, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command and other federal agencies, cover a period when millions of dollars in cash, often in stacks of shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills, were dispensed from a loosely guarded safe in the basement of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.

Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.

Think about that. The people who are now keening over "reckless spending" are the same ones who blindly sent pallet-loads of shrink wrapped hundred dollar bills to a war zone and didn't bother to keep any records. Now we find out that much of it found its way into the pockets of the people who were dispensing it. Gosh, what a surprise.

Americans can visualize a pallet of shrink wrapped blocks of hundred dollar bills going to a war zone and being used to bribe the crap out of Sunnis in Anbar, you know.

That kind of thing is especially poignant now, after the person visualizing Cubic Yard Of Benjamins(tm) has lost their job.