Free Republic

The odds 10,000 to 1 are not good for the public's financial health. Every one of the well-known debacle companies had CPA auditors who said the financial statements were just fine. For AIG it was PricewaterhouseCoopers. Lehman Brothers (the largest bankruptcy in American history) had Ernst & Young. Fannie Mae's fiascos were OK'd by Deloitte & Touche. KPMG was responsible for Countrywide. The $50 billion Madoff Ponzi scheme somehow could not be detected by numerous CPA auditors for its investors. Is the loss to the investing public $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or more? How many life savings are destroyed? How...

Did you hear the one about the pot dealer's tax return? The New Yorker who claimed the whole city as a dependent? The exotic dancer who deducted ... well ... you know? That's right, it's time once again for Bankrate's 10 craziest tax write-offs you've ever heard, presented as a shot of levity to help make filing your annual federal income tax return a little less tedious. In our first installment, taxpayers sought deductions for everything from ostrich breeding to sperm donations. In round two, a high-tech breast pump and a pimped-out Amish buggy led the list of questionable claims....

March 19, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Facts for FeithCPA history. By L. Paul Bremer III A recent article in the Washington Post previewed the forthcoming book by former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith. In his book Feith apparently alleges that I was responsible for what he calls the single biggest mistake the United States made in Iraq. He claims that I unilaterally abandoned the president’s policy, promoted by Feith and others before the war, to grant sovereignty to a group of Iraqi exiles immediately after Saddam’s defeat. On March 16, Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute elaborated on this...

<p>Once conventional wisdom congeals, even facts can't shake it loose.</p> <p>These days, everyone "knows'' that the Coalition Provisional Authority made two disastrous decisions at the beginning of the US occupation of Iraq: to vengefully drive members of the Baath Party from public life and to recklessly disband the Iraqi army.</p>

Once conventional wisdom congeals, even facts can't shake it loose. These days, everyone "knows" that the Coalition Provisional Authority made two disastrous decisions at the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq: to vengefully drive members of the Baath Party from public life and to recklessly disband the Iraqi army. The most recent example is former CIA chief George J. Tenet, whose new memoir pillories me for those decisions (even though I don't recall his ever objecting to either call during our numerous conversations in my 14 months leading the CPA). Similar charges are unquestioningly repeated in books and articles....

Excerpt - WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said on Tuesday. The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime. Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep....

Startling facts from the recent Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances indicate that the typical American family has about $3,800 in the bank, no retirement account, no mutual funds and no stocks or bonds. Financial planners suggest families do the following to avoid financial ... http://www.financialfitnessohio.com/Main.aspx?MenuItem=580 http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf

In the United States, a former official has admitted stealing millions of dollars meant for the reconstruction of Iraq. Robert Stein held a senior position in the Coalition Provisional Authority, which administered Iraq after American and allied forces invaded in 2003. In a Washington court, he admitted to stealing more than $2m (£1.12m) and taking bribes in return for contracts. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. Robert Stein's story is one of extraordinary corruption and excess amid the ruins of Iraq. He was in charge of overseeing money for the rebuilding of shattered infrastructure in south-central...

L. Paul Bremmer THE recent debate set off by the publication of my book about my time in Iraq has shed more heat than light.... And while I had concerns about the quality of Iraqi forces two years ago, their training has since been revamped. Today they are playing an increasingly important role in defending Iraq. Despite the missteps and setbacks, there is little question that, thanks to efforts by the American-led coalition, enormous political and economic progress is being made in Iraq today. ... Iraqis voted in the country's first genuine elections. Then they wrote and approved a new...

P. Bremer's "My year in Iraq" offends Poland 12.01.2006 Accusations, voiced by the former US civilian administrator in Iraq, that Polish troops have not realized their tasks in Iraq properly are absurd, Poland’s defense ministry has said. The US ambassador to Poland expressed regrets that false opinions were circulated about Polish soldiers. A spokesman for the defense ministry Piotr Paszkowski said that the book published by Paul Bremer proves complete ignorance of the terms and principles on which Poland sent its troops to Iraq. He recalled that they were trained and equipped for stabilization and not offensive actions. In his...

Britain was 'weak-kneed' over arrest of Iraq cleric, says Bremer By Francis Harris in Washington (Filed: 10/01/2006) The British Government and Armed Forces were "weak kneed" and displayed "cold feet" over plans to arrest a radical Islamic cleric in Iraq, the former US administrator in Iraq claimed yesterday. Paul Bremer also turned his fire on organisations with a reputation for hawkishness, including the CIA, the US Marine Corps and the US chiefs of staff, who were berated for their timidity in refusing to arrest Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shia leader. His accusations came in a long-awaited memoir of his 13-month...

L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, urged U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to increase U.S. postwar troop strength in the country, but his pleas were ignored, the former diplomat said. In an interview on NBC Television broadcast Sunday night, Bremer said he sent a memo to Rumsfeld suggesting that half a million soldiers would be needed, three times the number deployed by the Bush administration. "I never had any reaction from him," Bremer told Brian Williams". Bremer, on a media blitz in connection with release...

Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. civilian occupation authority in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, has admitted the United States did not anticipate the insurgency in the country, NBC Television said on Friday. Bremer, interviewed by the network in connection with release of his book on Iraq, recounted the decision to disband the Iraqi army quickly after arriving in Baghdad, a move many experts consider a major miscalculation. When asked who was to blame for the subsequent Iraqi rebellion, in which thousands of Iraqis and Americans have died, Bremer said "we really didn't see the insurgency coming," the network said...

WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - A U.S. Army officer was arrested on Thursday for stealing between $80,000 and $100,000 in funds from the U.S. governing administration in Iraq and using the money to install a deck and hot hub in her New Jersey home. The U.S. Justice Department said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Debra Harrison, 47, who served with the Coalition Provisional Authority, was arrested on charges involving bribery, money laundering and fraud. Harrison is the second army officer and the fourth person charged in the past few weeks in connection with the scheme. The Justice Department said Harrison was...

FORMER CPA OFFICIAL AND CONTRACTOR ARRESTED IN CASE INVOLVING FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING SCHEME IN IRAQ WASHINGTON, D.C. – A former Coalition Provisional Authority official and a contractor doing business in Iraq have been arrested on charges of conspiring to commit money laundering and wire fraud in connection with a bribery and fraud scheme, the Department of Justice announced today. Robert J. Stein, 50, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, was arrested in Fayetteville on Nov. 14, 2005 and is currently in custody there. In 2003 and 2004, Stein was the Comptroller and Funding Officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority – South...

...Despite the amazing progress in Iraq in two short years, some armchair experts carp that we should have moved even faster. Frankly, it's hard to understand what they are thinking.... From the outset, the Coalition recognized that democracy requires more than just elections. We judged that we had a special obligation to help Iraqis design a political and legal structure to guide Iraq's journey from tyranny to democracy. The result, after three months of intense negotiations and compromise, was the interim constitution. This revolutionary document addresses three crucial areas. First, the Coalition insisted that checks and balances guard against the...

Newly released documents from the Bush administration show that a former member of Saddam Hussein's inner circle has resurfaced inside the new Iraqi government, bringing charges of corruption, bribery and bid-rigging. As a result, millions of U.S. aid dollars and billions in Iraqi government funds have disappeared in an ongoing scandal that is poised to engulf Baghdad and Washington. Worse still, a leading candidate for the top elected post in Iraq has also been implicated in the report as having taken "payoffs" in order to rig a major government cell phone contract. According to a May 2004 U.S. Defense Department...

Some U. S. dioceses, such as New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., have granted priestly faculties to Patriotic Association priests, allowing them to openly offer Holy Mass and administer other Sacraments, including hearing confessions in Roman Catholic parishes. May Catholics who are the recipients of these sacraments from a Patriotic Association priest are in the dark, because they do not know the identity of these Patriotic Association priests. According to item 5 of the Holy See’s 1988 China directives, “The Patriotic bishops and priests are not to be invited or even allowed to celebrate religious functions in public,...

Occupation authority said unable to account for $8.8 billion - The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found. The U.S. officials relied on Iraqi audit agencies to account for the funds but those offices were not even functioning when the funds were transferred....

In April 2004, followers of Iraqi Shi‘ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr launched a well-coordinated uprising across southern Iraq. While Western media focused on events in Sadr City, Najaf, and Karbala, violence occurred elsewhere as well. A Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) source forwarded the following after-action report regarding violence in the town of Al-Kut, the capital of the Wassit governorate and home to the Ukrainian contingent.The unclassified report, written by a coalition security contractor, highlights dysfunction between regional coalition offices and the Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters in Baghdad, as well as tension between diplomats and security officers. The summary faulted a British...