At The New Yorker, Dexter Filkins writes, The Afghan Bank Heist:
 Poring over stacks of documents, investigators at the American Embassy in Kabul have pinpointed dozens of instances in which Kabul Bank executives may have bribed Afghan officials, including a successful bid to process the salaries that the government pays its employees each month—at least seventy-five million dollars. Access to the salaries would give bank officials an opportunity to earn millions of dollars in interest in the course of a single year. American officials say that Kabul Bank’s largesse extended to members of parliament and almost anyone whose silence would allow bank executives to embark on a spree of buying, lending, and looting. In addition, some current and former Afghan officials say, Kabul Bank became an unofficial arm of the Karzai government, bribing parliamentarians in order to secure votes for its legislative agenda. The investigation into Kabul Bank was run by a remarkable but little-known group of Americans working at the Embassy called the Afghan Threat Finance Cell. Their findings are considered so sensitive that almost no one—generals, diplomats, the investigators themselves—is willing to talk about them publicly. The unit, made up of agents from the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Treasury Department, and the Pentagon, has compiled extensive evidence of bribery. “If this were America, fifty people would have been arrested by now,” an American official told me. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was briefed on the investigation in January, but some people fear that the Obama Administration won’t do anything about what has been discovered. After months of sparring with Karzai, the Administration appears to be paralyzed. “We have to work with these people,’’ a senior NATO officer told me. The Threat Finance Cell also has almost single-handedly demonstrated the degree to which the American-led war in Afghanistan is compromised by connections among the Taliban, drug traffickers, and Afghan officials. The group was set up, in 2008, to sever the links between Taliban insurgents and their financing, much of which was believed to come from the drug trade. Instead, the investigators found that the lines connecting the Taliban and the drug smugglers often ran through the Afghan government. They also uncovered one of the darker truths of the war: the vast armies of private gunmen paid to protect American supply convoys frequently use American money to bribe Taliban fighters to stand back. These bribes are believed by officials in Kabul and in Washington to be one of the main sources of the Taliban’s income. The Americans, it turns out, are funding both sides of the war. ... |
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2002
| Of course, the conference had Ann Coulter raging on us treasonous Democrats, and how we violated "every single one of the Ten Commandments". Definitely "ideas that make America great". And Tom DeLay, and Mitch McConnel, and other GOP VIPs were all in attendance cheering this gaggle on. And though Cheney's people asked the show organizers to stop selling anti-Muslim paraphanelia, such items still sold briskly (though under the counter, not in full display). But it was not all fire and brimstone at the conference. There were actual moments of light-hearted joking: At a Thursday seminar titled "2002 and Beyond: Are Liberals an Endangered Species?" Paul Rodriguez, managing editor of the conservative magazine Insight, warned that the liberal beast wouldn't be vanquished until conservatives learn to be merciless. "One thing Democrats have long known how to do is play hardball," he intoned, urging Republicans to adopt more "bare-knuckle" tactics. The next day, Frank Gaffney, assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, told a rapt crowd about the "well-financed media campaign against the Bush White House." Ha ha ha! Say what you will, but those CPAC crazies do have a sense of humor! In any case, my original point still stands -- this gaggle of conservative attendees reveled in the muck of their hate and spite -- all cheered on by the leading lights of the GOP establishment. And what can be more legitimizing than the presence of a vice president who not only honors CPAC with a keynote speech, but also tells them their ideas "make America great"? |
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