I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that some morning soon Shaalan is going to wake up dead.
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September 20, 2005
WB: Let’s Make a Deal
Comments
does anyone remember reading a story(perhaps in vanity fair or the new yorker) this summer about an american arms contractor who was killed in iraq who had made a deal to refurbish old equipment for the iraqi army. thousands of old tanks? he had made some deal worth multiple millions and got burned, the iraqi official he was dealing w/left the country
from atrios guardianlink
The “robbery” is believed to include the signing of multimillion-dollar deals with companies to supply equipment that was sometimes inappropriate for the new army or was years out of date. It is also alleged that the ministry paid huge premiums for some military hardware.
Judge Radhi said he expected the court to issue warrants over the next week to 10 days for Mr Shaalan and for other senior defence ministry officials. The judge said he had passed the file of evidence on the case to Iraqi authorities two months ago.
could it be the same incident, from around june/july?
Posted by: annie | Sep 20 2005 17:46 utc | 1
Billmon wrote:
Jordan currently has an arrest warrant outstanding for one of Jaafari’s deputy prime ministers, the infinitely malleable Ahmed Chalabi.
However:
King Abdullah of Jordan has agreed to pardon Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi political leader, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for fraud after his bank collapsed with $300m (£160m) in missing deposits in 1989.
(from the May 11, 2005 Independent)
Posted by: MontyCanstin | Sep 20 2005 17:58 utc | 2
@annie – that would be Mr. Stoffel, a civilian arms dealer and CIA agent. Even Debkafile thinks he was creapy and then, after a good summary of the know facts, they add their spin and point to Syria and Saddam.
My bet is that most of that money is back under US control somewhere. These folks ruling are the same who did the Iran-Contra deal and something like that is going on here. 1.3 billion is just a bit too much to be looted by a single person.
There is an interesting book waiting to be written on this.
Last summer, Stoffel finally seemed to hit pure reconstruction gold, or, more specifically, scrap iron—military scrap iron. Stoffel and his colleagues saw opportunity in the relics of Saddam’s army, the thousands of tanks and armored vehicles stowed away in desert depots and that now belonged to the reconstituted Iraqi Ministry of Defense. They could be worth hundreds of millions on the international scrap metal market. (One of Stoffel’s associates estimated the value of the scrap to be at least $1.5 billion.) In a collapsing country, he figured, he could at least sell the junk.
hm. maybe false alarm
washington monthly
Stoffel—who’d come to Iraq on the strength of his connections with a circle of Washington lobbyists associated with the invasion’s eminence grise, Ahmed Chalabi—had recently accused the Iraqi government and American employees of U.S. military contractors of corruption in a massive deal involving military equipment. But he believed his friends in Washington had sorted it all out and that he was going to be paid the millions of dollars he felt he was owed. An Army colonel who saw him that day said he appeared “pleased.”
but i can’t help wonder if they are connected
Posted by: annie | Sep 20 2005 18:15 utc | 4
annie: the same thing in happening with former soviet union scrap,
and what happened in the past was radioactive-contaminated scrap
destroyed the steel smelters as a cost of $100M’s to rebuild them.
What happens this go-around is Bush has declared all such materials
“low-risk” non-significant, allowing an Oklahoma stampede of scrap
deals by arms merchants, bringing radioactive scrap to the US, that
will become your new glow-in-the-dark hybrid motor vehicle.
Read: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m15920&l=i&size=1&hd=0
We have no idea how incredibly corrupt Gordian Knot government is.
You could spend the rest of your life unraveling a single thread.
We need a blanket broadcast to insiders to anonymously post truth.
Otherwise, birth defects in Iraq will morph into global organ donors.
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 20 2005 20:39 utc | 6
Shaalan is obviously a Jordanian sposnsored patsy in this Iraqi expat merry go round that is robbing Iraqi and US citizens/taxpayers blind.
He’s dead alright; the Jordanian special forces are probably sequestering/downloading his Swiss bank accounts details as we blog.
Posted by: Friendly Fire | Sep 20 2005 21:00 utc | 7
The idea that the U.S. would give 1 billion dollars to people in Iraq to spend as they saw fit on weapons is ludicrous. Even factoring in the gross incompetence of the Bush Administration, it isn’t plausible that the worlds largest manufacturer and supplier of weapons (yes, the good old U.S.A.) would give a billion dollars so Iraq could buy old guns from Lebanon and rusty helicopters from Poland. I’m sure they could have given our billion dollars to our own defense companies. If this story is true, then it was just a money laundering scheme and I’m sure the money is connected in some way to the cronies and sycophants tied in with the amazingly corrupt Bush Administration. When the hell are people going to wise up to these guys? They are looting the treasury and no doubt having a laugh about it.
Posted by: steve expat | Sep 20 2005 23:10 utc | 8
The idea that the U.S. would give 1 billion dollars to people in Iraq to spend as they saw fit on weapons is ludicrous.
As I understand it, it was actually Iraqi government revenue from oil sales. But I also suspect some rather large money laundering transactions are involved.
Posted by: Billmon | Sep 20 2005 23:24 utc | 9
an ex FFL guy, working for Kroll Int Assoc (KIA geddit ?) working for USAID pulled out. wearing body armour in the Green Zone was too much for him…and it was proving difficult to get paid for some security co’s – Aegis staff went on strike at the airport a fortnight ago over lost pay.
My friend says the US is running out of money – hence the stepping up of internal friction as the endless boondoggling, which has been going on since Saddam;s time (courtesy Oil for Food ) is drying up and the fighting has started to get the final spoils.
If one guy can waltz off with $1.3 Bn or $2.6 Bn then it soon evaporates. Stories also that the copper cable for power distrubution has all disappeared, hence the shortage of power throughout the country.
Posted by: Edward Teague | Sep 20 2005 23:27 utc | 10
You bet we’re running out of money. Commissar Rumpy of the DoD sneaked in the announcement last week that we’re cutting the forces in Afghanistan next year by 20%. Whatever the number of men and effort that we’re expending there and in Pakistan isn’t enough to get Osama. Now it is a hard task sending soldiers into an unfriendly country chasing a few criminals but isn’t that the job?
Posted by: christofay | Sep 21 2005 2:16 utc | 11
Still Silence From 9-11 SEC/FBI Stock Speculation Probe MIA
Still Silence From Kenny Lay Probe MIA
Still Silence From Anthrax Probe MIA
Still Silence From Fitzgerald….
you too Can play this game?
Still Silence From ______
Still Silence From ______
Still Silence From ______
Go ahead try it…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 2:24 utc | 12
That’s Very Interesting…but what does it mean? These guys just print money, or did I miss something? Is Wall Streeet starting to slap their hands? Is Asia no longer buying up Govt. bonds? I thght. I read something about that – that now hedge funds had stepped into the breach.
W/Iran offering to trade oil w/China for goods could it be that China threatened to stop buying xUS gov. debt if US invades Iran?
Posted by: jj | Sep 21 2005 2:46 utc | 13
Yes, by all means LETS MAKE A DEAL
U.S. Designates Important Qadi/Bin Laden Associate
More conundrums to confuse and wrap yor pumpkin around:
Lucy Komisar Lucy Komisar is a fine investigative journalist to keep up with, also see: Probe Closed
fINALLY, for those so inclined, do a google search on the Bank al-Taqwa, and the IGD, to stand upon the threshold of the abyss…
“I think God is a sadist — and He probably doesn’t know it.”
James Coburn in Cross of Iron
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 3:15 utc | 14
“An estimate by Risk Management Solutions, an outfit in Newark, California, is that Hurricane Katrina caused $100 billion of damages, perhaps two-thirds of which were uninsured. The insured/uninsured distinction is not particularly relevant from a macro-economic perspective. In order to pay claims, insurance companies will have sell assets. In effect, this means that the demand for funds will rise. Individuals and businesses with uninsured losses will cut back on their saving and increase on their borrowing in order to rebuild. Congress has quickly authorized the expenditure of $10.5 billion in emergency aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction, with additional sums likely to follow given the magnitude of uninsured losses. Because taxes are not going to be increased, these hurricane-related federal expenditures also represent an increased demand for credit. All else the same, this increased demand for funds from the private and government sectors would put great upward pressure on the structure of interest rates. But if the Fed does pause in its short-term interest rate increases, then a large part of this increased demand for credit will be accommodated **through the commercial banking system** with the Fed providing the “seed money.”
There you have it. Eliminate prevailing wages to boost the bottom line to Big Defense-Related Construction. Print more fiat money and double-deficit expenditures to boost the bottom line of Big Banking.
Oh, did I forget to mention? You paid for it, seven generations out!
$25,000 per person. $100,000 per family. On credit. Tick-tock-tick.
$6.57BILLION more tomorrow…. $6.57BILLION more the day after….
Posted by: tante aime | Sep 21 2005 5:33 utc | 15
Suddenly someone has realized that the same bunch of monkeys running our country by slipping on banana peels is also printing the currency. Don’t worry about the monkeys, Del Monte pays them to act funny. As for the currency, ask Mr Magoo just back from a meeting of his personality cult at the Jackson K Hole to print it bigger. At least it can work as wallpaper if it fails as a store of value and goes unmediated as a means of exchange.
It’s a blogathon all over the place. But if you want to follow the pennent race of world economies blog go to http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser/. Setser seems to be getting to the messier maxi econ problems while the Delong site quietly settles into its slipper chair of conversation. Setser’s blog isn’t a place for snarkiness which is all I can write so I just read there.
Luckily this Whiskey Bar doesn’t have that “First”, “Frist” stuff going on. That’s like watching a young peson get into their first drunk, embarrassing.
The creepiest to me silence that Uncle Scam lists is the anthrax one. Whatever happened? Terrorism in the U.S. traditionally is the work of right wing death squads, I’m counting the KKK as terrorists. And the anthrax killer as it was directed to our democratic salons seemed to be a winger.
Posted by: christofay | Sep 21 2005 7:23 utc | 16
Iraqis to Bush — Where Did All Our Money Go?
by Evelyn J. Pringle, Dissident Voice, Sept. 18, 2005.
Very good round-up.
Link
Posted by: Noisette | Sep 21 2005 8:50 utc | 17
The biggest “silence” of them all IMHO (as I wrote recently on European Trib) is that the US is like a mighty oak ready to collapse — a few more blows of the axe — and that collapse will smash a lot of other trees, whatever, and yet no one (except here on the loonie left) is shouting “timber!”.
I know some folks don’t believe it will happen, but they never seem to offer actual not faith-based solutions to the real problems.
Posted by: Lupin | Sep 21 2005 8:54 utc | 18
@ Uncle $cam:
Thanks for the suggestion regarding IGD and Bank al-Taqwa,
but after a rapid skim-through I get the impression that there are only a very few “primary sources” and that mostly one gets mostly various versions of a Lorenzo Vidino’s article (even including the German-language Baden-Württemberg documents). I’d like to know more about
Vidino, and also to know about your view of the abyss that is gazing into us. I have some conjectures, but am trying to abstain from mouthing off about things I don’t know about. (It’s hard.)
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 21 2005 10:00 utc | 19
@Hannah K. O’Luthon
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Conquest of Europe
by Lorenzo Vidino
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 10:36 utc | 20
Further, how many here know of Karl Rove’s role in helping to coalesce the Islamist element in the Republican Party. It should be noted that the Islamist, Al Qaeda and Al Taqwa elements that were raided on 3/20/2002 were linked directly to the Republican party’s ethnic outreach organization. “ . . . That brief conversation [between Norquist and Karl Rove] in Austin, Texas, helped start a new chapter in Mr. Norquist’s career—and in the political lives of Muslims in this country. The following year, Mr. Norquist started the nonprofit Islamic Free Market Institute. In collaboration with Mr. Rove, now Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, he and other institute leaders courted Muslim voters for the Bush 2000 presidential campaign. Mr. Norquist even credits gains among Muslims with putting Mr. Bush in a position to win the critical Florida contest . . . To run the nonprofit’s day-to-day operations, Mr. Norquist turned to Khalid Saffuri, a Palestinian-American raised in Kuwait who had been an official of the American Muslim Council, a political group in Washington. The institute’s founding chairman was a Palestinian American, Talat Othman, who had served with Mr. Bush on the board of Harken Energy Corp. and later visited the president in the White House, according to records obtained by the National Security News Service.” (“In Difficult Times, Muslims Count On Unlikely Advocate” by Tom Hamburger and Glenn R. Simpson; The Wall Street Journal; pp. A1-A8.)
see Grover Norquist,and his Islamic Free Market Institute, Al Taqwa and the Republican Party’s ethnic outreach organization
A Legal Counterattack
After months of working below the radar, a huge U.S. legal team [read: former Secretary of State James Baker’s law firm] hired by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has sprung into action and begun a major counteroffensive against a landmark lawsuit seeking $1 trillion in damages on behalf of the victims of the September 11 terror attacks.
The opening defense salvo in what promises to be a bruising legal battle was fired last week when a trio of lawyers from Baker Botts, a prestigious Houston-based law firm, filed a motion on behalf of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi defense minister. The motion attacked the 9-11 lawsuit as a “broadside indictment of Saudi government, religion and culture.” It also argued that, as the third-ranking official of a foreign government, their client is immune from any U.S. legal action and that he should therefore be dismissed from the case altogether.
On April 4, Treasury Secretary O’Neill met with powerful Islamist Republicans whose spheres of interest overlap those of the institutions and individuals targeted on March 20. (“O’Neill Met Muslim Activists Tied to Charities” by Glenn R. Simpson [with Roger Thurow]; Wall Street Journal; 4/18/2002; p. A4.)
IT SHOULD ALSO BE NOTED, A principal figure in the group that interceded on behalf of the (alleged) Al Qaeda/Al Taqwa-connected targets of the Operation Green Quest raids was Talat Othman, a close business and political associate of President Bush.
fINALLY, a Wall Street Journal article described some of the organizations targeted in the raids. “These include Al-Taqwa Management, a recently liquidated Swiss company the U.S. government believes acted as a banker for Osama bin Laden’s al Queda terrorist network. . .Two people affiliated with the companies and charities are linked by records to entities already designated as terrorist by the U.S. government. Hisham Al-Talib, who served as an officer of SAAR, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Safa Trust Inc., another Mirza charity, during the 1970’s was an officer of firms run by Youssef M. Nada, records show. Mr. Nada is a Switzerland-based businessman whose assets have been frozen by the U.S. for alleged involvement in terrorist financing, and is alleged by U.S. officials to be a key figure in the Taqwa network. . .Jamal Barzinji, an officer of Mr. Mirza’s company Mar-Jac and other entities, also was involved with Mr. Nada’s companies in the 1970’s, according to bank documents from Liechtenstein. A message was left yesterday for Mr. Barzinji at his address in Herndon. Mr. Barzinji and Mr. Talib live across the street from each other. A third business associate of Mr. Nada, Ali Ghaleb Himmat (who also has been designated by the Treasury as aiding terrorism), is listed as an official of the Geneva branch of another charity operated by Mr. Mirza, the International Islamic Charitable Organization.” (“Funds Under Terror Probe Flowed From Offshore” by Glenn R. Simpson [with Michael M. Phillips]; Wall Street Journal; 3/22/2002; p. A4.)
Interesting what is out there hidden behind paid subscriptions and expencive lexus nexus service… why a investigative journalist could really fuck shit up…until they killed him of course.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 11:13 utc | 21
@ Uncle $cam
The link was usable, after a bit of correction
, and leads rapidly to The Counterterrorism Blog which is governed by such
luminaries as Steve Emerson, Dennis Lormel, and Doug Farah.
Emerson, who has been active in conection with the Sami Al Arian
case in Florida, has had his work sharply criticized by John Sugg of Creative Loafing, a journalist I respect; Lormel, erstwhile head of the FBI’s terrorism financing investigative group, assured us that there was no insider trading in connection with 9/11,
and Farah is a leading Viktor Bout “stalker” who writes for WaPo and has good sources in the intelligence community. All in all, this is not a group that inspires my confidence (others may differ, of course), and I can’t help wondering about the their funding and possible tacit agenda.
But, of course, that’s probably just what Uncle $cam had in mind when he set us this useful exercise problem, whose outcome is to reveal once again that it’s a small world.
Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 21 2005 11:28 utc | 22
@ Uncle $cam
The last post was mine. I have recently become
subscribed to Lexis Nexis (really my place of work has
subscribed) and would love to have something interesting to test L-N out with. Suggestions?
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Sep 21 2005 11:34 utc | 23
O rhe corruption goes deep w/these gangsters…
U.S. Trails Va. Muslim Money, Ties
Clues Raise Questions About Terror Funding
Carlyle’s Way
Making a mint inside “the iron triangle” of defense, government and industry.
also see: Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; Copyright 2000 [SC]; Algora Publishing; ISBN 1-892941-06-6
Finally, see: What Congress Does Not Know about Enron and 9/11
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 11:38 utc | 24
for Uncle Scam – Silence – 9/11 – Compensation.
How many claims were there? Thousands, one vaguely thinks. That’s right; 2,880 for death (accepted). It looks like almost all families of the dead claimed – report says 98%.
People in the planes?
Flight No. AA11 65 out of 92
Flight No. UA175 46 out of 65
Flight No. AA 77 33 out of 64
Flight No. UA 93 25 out of 45.
— Yes, each death is counted separately. The numbers are from the report. That’s 98 non-claimed if my quick count is right…more than 2% of the total (so all of the ‘missing’ claims.) No lists of names have been published, though some of the passengers can probably be found on the preliminary, very short, “compensation claims” list published.
Besides the few known exceptions, people who have stated publicly that they would not accept the Gvmt. money (e.g. Ellen Mariani), does anyone know anything about these families claiming elsewhere – perhaps for more? Is there any legal, financial, strategic reason why they would refrain from, or be prevented from, claiming?
What about the crew (who are included in the nos. above)? Might they be compensated some other way?
P.S. body counts….only 30 of the compensated death victims resided outside the US.
link to download the PDF 120 p. report:
Link
To come to the point. Who exactly is guilty of silence?
Posted by: Noisette | Sep 21 2005 15:24 utc | 26