Cheney's War-Sized Safe

We were told that the reason we sent troops to Vietnam was to stop the Communist World threat (the falling red domino scare theory), which is now generally accepted as complete twaddle. So our leaders in the White House who made those decisions either genuinely believed in an imaginary enemy, or were purchased by the American War Machine for Its bidding. The truth is, we were in Vietnam to fill the pockets of war profiteers, and test new military swag.

Here we are again, only now we're being told that we're in Iraq to :

Prevent the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Depose Saddam Hussain
Set up Democratic Iraqi Government
Defeat Al-Qaeda
Defeat Iraqi insurgents
Defeat somebody, anybody
Springboard into Iran

But again, the real reason, the truth, is to fill the pockets of war profiteers.

Three years before we invaded, Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton, aka KBR, is today the #1 American contractor in Iraq ($15-30 billion, but who's counting?). According to Corporatepolicy.org, "In nine different reports, government auditors have found "widespread, systemic problems with almost every aspect of Halliburton's work in Iraq." Exactly like they did in Vietnam.

The Vice President has a man-sized Mossler safe in his office at the White House. The story below is from Wikileaks.org.

Over a thousand safes for secrets and cash

“	[S]ome American contractors correctly believed they could walk off with as much money as they could carry. The circumstances that surround the handling of comparatively small sums help explain the billions that ultimately vanished. In the south-central region of Iraq a contracting officer stored $2 million in a safe in his bathroom. One agent kept $678,000 in an unsecured footlocker.	„
	— Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Billions over Baghdad

Safes have played an important role for US Army in Iraq: not only for securing important documents and official funds, but also as a way to hide away largess obtained corruptly from the US federal reserve, via authorities which did not care to introduce even minimal oversight or accounting mechanisms. The October 2007 edition of Vanity Fair reports on US$12,000,000,000 in cash brought into Iraq under the auspices Coalition Provisional Authority, of which $9,000,000,000 cannot be accounted for.

Below are listed the types and unit assignments of 1,056 US military safes in Iraq.

Military unit	NATO Stock Number	Item name	Quantity
HHC 1 CD (WAGET0)	7110014821441	SAFE-(SPECIFY ON REQUISITION)	18
B 125 FIN BN (WH0FB0)	7110014821441	SAFE	16
A CO 4-1 STB MI (WJK2A0)	712501C006774	SAFE SECURITY CONTAINER: MOSLER	12
...	...	...	...