Tuesday, May 22, 2012

stimulus in a backpack

A friend, who was in a military unit in central Iraq some years ago, sends this photo.

Those are $100s.  Approximately $1 million US.  Actual real American simolions. 

My friend took this pic just before they stuffed this into a backpack, and went to go give it away in a village.  This was supposed to buy loyalty.

I submit that the military enlisted personnel are not well suited to carry out this task.  And that the task itself is asinine, because one-time "payments" like this are no more likely to cause growth, or loyalty, then the idiot Keynesian "stimulus" policies in the US.  Both of these policies are just political payoffs to friends, with no prospect of benefit to the nation, or to the taxpayers who are footing the bill.

Still, it had to be fun to have a thousand large in a backpack, walking on the streets of [city in central Iraq].  They should have invested in brown paper bags, to make the Mafia comparison even more realistic.

4 comments:

Pelsmin said...

This was the approach in Afghanistan too, after we threw out the Taliban. A friend who served there told me heavily armored convoys would pull into the town, the "chieftain" would come out, and they would toss him the duffel bag stuffed with hundreds. But there was a second benefit to this approach. If the intelligence told them that the chieftain was working against the US -- double crossing us -- the heavily-armored convoy would pull up, toss a duffel bag (stuffed with old newspapers) to the chieftain, and then open up with everything they had on him and the people standing around him. The thinking was "the closer someone is standing to him, the more he trusts them" so if they killed the group standing with him, they'd get most of the bad guys. I asked my friend if he thought the CIA ever got it wrong about who was double crossing us. Hadn't occurred to him.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

How does one make change in a country flooded with $100 bills, but nothing smaller? I suspect most of this cash headed straight to banks in safer countries.

Paper Bags said...

From where can i buy paper shopping bags in cheap rates?? paper bags with handles