Posted on 06/29/2010 6:21:20 PM PDT by Starman417
More than three billion dollars, packed into suitcases, loaded onto pallets, and declared to the Afghan authorities has been loaded onto airplanes and flown legally out of the country from Kabul International Airport in the last three years.
Officials believe some of the cash, if not most, is siphoned from Western aid projects and U.S., European and NATO contracts to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spent about $14 billion here last year alone. Profits reaped from the opium trade are also a part of the money flow, as is cash earned by the Taliban from drugs and extortion, officials say.The amount declared as it leaves the airport is vast in a nation where the gross domestic product last year totaled $13.5 billion. More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide. "It's not like they grow money on trees here," said a U.S. official investigating corruption and Taliban financing. "A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course."
![[AFMONEY]](http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AV959_AFMONE_NS_20100627172014.gif)
Most of the money is transfered through "Hawalas", a sometimes secret organization that has transfered money in the Muslim world for centuries.
Read more at floppingaces.net...
Both!
They are the same thing.
Yes and no. It's redistribution in the sense that our money is taxed away and given to someone else who doesn't earn it. On the other hand, redistribution is promoted with the idea that the money will go to someone who really needs it. Third world dictators, or first world union and political cronies aren't the advertised beneficiaries. So, its "concentration" of wealth, dishonestly done, rather than "spreading" of wealth.
Duh!
What do these nation builders think when they toss money around like it belongs to someone else?
Get the state department out of there. Declare free trade zones and encourage micro-lending and banking (hard for Islam, but solved for the most part) and win the war by killing the enemy day and night until the jobs done.
As the Brits say, I was just being cheeky. LOL
Occam's Razor
Who decided they are mutually exclusive?
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