The Republican Party is doomed.Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration . . . or is it?
Consider: on Tuesday Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) heard testimony from L. Paul Bremer III about waste and fraud in the rebuilding of Iraq. According to Waxman, Bremer lost $8.8 billion dollars:
Waxman said up to $12 billion in Iraqi money was converted to dollars, held in the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and shipped in pallets to Baghdad that totaled 363 tons.Think about that: 363 tons of cash, and two-thirds of it was lost! That's 242 tons of cash!!!
[Th]e defendants smuggled bricks of stolen cash from Iraq back to the United States for personal use.Hmmm. "[B]ricks of stolen cash." So, what's the relationship between these two stories? Why will this destroy the Republican Party?
Last year, Rajiv Chandrasekaran published his stunning book Imperial Life in the Emerald City. According to Chandrasekaran, Democrats were systematically excluded from the process of rebuilding Iraq!
Waxman--one of Congress' toughest investigators--is in a free-fire zone. With billions of dollars--literally hundreds of tons of cash--missing, Waxman can investigate to his heart's content knowing all the while that everyone he catches will almost certainly be a Republican!
What is the scale of the Republican Party's exposure? Even the corporate mainstream media won't be able to ignore this story for two years. Every week will bring new indictments, new scandals. And keep in mind that Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) used to chair Waxman's committee and NEVER DID ANYTHING TO STEM THE TIDE OF CORRUPTION! If anything, the Republican Party tried to cover up the fraud and waste in Iraq!
In two years the words "Republican" and "indicted for fraud" will be almost synonymous.