IRC: We love Hamid Karzai!
Yesterday I told you about how the World Socialist Web Site feels about the second largest of our US Refugee Resettlement contractors (the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest)—the International Rescue Committee that brings on average 10,000 or more refugees a year to your towns and cities.
But, not only that, they muck around in the business of countries all over the world while you pay their salaries and fund their New York galas.
Below (posted yesterday) is what the World Socialists dug out on their finances in an article critical of the organizations choice of David Miliband to head up the multi-million dollar do-gooder operation. I think it’s called doing well by doing good!*
According to a report on the IRC from Root Cause, a non-profit research and consulting firm, published in the Independent, only 14 percent of its funding came from private sources. Government grants and contracts, in contrast, accounted for 44 percent, foreign government grants and contracts 27 percent and 11 percent from UN agency grants and contracts. As its president, Miliband will receive £263,000 a year (US$400,000) plus £30,000 (US$52,000) from related groups—five times the salary he received as an MP. [And, about equal to Rupp’s!—ed]
Today a reader sent me this list of the recipients of the IRC’s prestigious “freedom” award given each year, we are told, at a swanky black-tie event in NYC. Look who they honored in 2002—none other than Afghanistan’s creepy and corrupt President Hamid Karzai! Earlier awards went to George Soros and John McCain which tells us a lot!
But, what makes that old news so interesting is that our reader directs us to this Reuters story today:
CIA Bribes Karzai: Millions In ‘Ghost Money’ Paid To Afghanistan President’s Office, New York Times Reports
April 29 (Reuters) – Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, the New York Times says, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
The so-called “ghost money” was meant to buy influence for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but instead fuelled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.
“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan”, one American official said, “was the United States.”
The CIA declined to comment on the report and the U.S. State Department did not immediately comment. The New York Times did not publish any comment from Karzai or his office.
“We called it ‘ghost money’,” Khalil Roman, who served as Karzai’s chief of staff from 2002 until 2005, told the New York Times. “It came in secret and it left in secret.”
So, either the IRC leaders are incredibly naive suck-ups, or, could they be the bag men?
Maybe that World Socialist Web Site is on to something when they suggest that the IRC’s “humanitarian” involvement in Afghanistan and elsewhere is just a pretty good cover:
The IRC’s charity status is used as a front behind which Washington pursues its strategic interests throughout the globe
Bottom line for us? Why the hell should hardworking American taxpayers be paying for whatever they are doing—galas for the likes of Karzai, Soros and McCain, or CIA influence buying?
Is the IRC ‘working’ in your city? Check out their US map here. And, here is where they are working across the globe.
For new readers: there are presently nine major federal contractors and 300 or so subcontractors bringing refugees and working with asylum seekers in your towns.
One more thing! I forgot to tell you! The IRC is a pusher of the Gang of Eight amnesty bill. Go here and see how they have even drafted the message they want their groupies to send to Congress! Could it be because there is more money for them and the potential for more ‘clients’ to resettle if the bill becomes law.
*There is actually a song called The Old Dope Peddler which includes these lines:
It’s the old dope peddler
Doing well by doing good.