"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that’s exactly what our government did!" (words from Rep. Henry Waxman ...)

As amazing as the facts are as they slowly unravel, we did indeed ship first four billion dollars (cold cash) and then another five billion dollars (in three shipments) to Iraq ... 363 tons of $100 bills in one shipment alone... and guess what? No receipts and no accounting as to how/where the money was spent.

I can't imagine how J. Paul Bremer III was able to keep a straight face as he passed this information to Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But then what could we have expected, the words coming from the mouth of a Medal of Freedom holder for his efforts in Iraq before the new Iraqi Government took office.

Interestingly, the last payments were made to the Iraqis the day before the new government took office.

Huh? Why wouldn't we wait until after the new government took office so that some legitimate accounting could be made of the expenditures of the money?

And this nine billion dollars is in addition to the other ten billion that has yet to be found in unrelated bad bookkeeping ...

It's quite likely that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest of Bush's gaggle of right-wing robots will find some way to defend even this. But as for the rest of us--and especially this once-moderate-Republican blogger--the loss of roughly ten billion dollars stacked neatly on upwards of 500 pallets offloaded onto small out-of-the-way Iraqi runways takes the cake. Maybe we can't impeach the President and Vice-president for the needless loss of life, but the loss of billions of dollars? Hell, that'll grab the Republicans attention.

My once-Republican brother in Connecticut would even agree with me on that thought.