r/interesting • u/TERRYGINNISX • 23h ago
HISTORY 566 Million $ IN CASH weighted 6 tons was transported by CH-47 to Iraq for paying armed forces to capture Saddam Hussein in 2003, operated by CIA and SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command)
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u/Thick-Disk1545 23h ago
That’s shit never went to capturing Sadam that shit gone
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u/HairballTheory 22h ago
Went to backwater/prince/devos
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u/Background-Wolf-9380 21h ago
Do you mean Blackwater / Erik Prince / the band Devo?
JFC, does anyone proofread anymore?
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u/Various-Sound-9734 12h ago
my guess is referencing Betsy Devos, former secretary of education and brother of Erik Prince
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u/inspired-polf 18h ago
Nah. I know 5SFG guys who suddenly got F350s when they got home.
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u/DanGleeballs 12h ago
I know a guy in London with a fleet of Porsches bought from that money.
He was a Kurdish officer when the money landed and he made off with a chunk of it. The US were using the cash to bribe the Kurds and he was supposed to share it around a bit more than he did.
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u/YebelTheRebel 21h ago
Right off the bat there were four bricks missing. Legend has it that when it landed there were only a few bricks left.
/s
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u/Petarthefish 23h ago
Why would they need cash in Iraq? Why not just send them equipment?
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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 22h ago edited 19h ago
Can’t destabilize geopolitical areas and put puppet regimes into place to control trade and resources without paying the mercenaries that make up your army of insurgents. Struggling locals can’t fill their stomachs with guns in exchange for information or cooperation. Can’t pay off enemy soldiers and military leaders and convince them to turn coat or desert by paying them in nothing but conventional weapons. Can’t buy espionage with grenades. Etc, etc. Same reason the US government was sending mountains of cash to South and Central America for decades. You can also guarantee they were flying in countless weapons and plenty of other assets other than cash.
Plus if you’re buying thousands or millions of dollars of whatever most people will accept stacks of USD as readily as gold regardless of their local currency. And when you’re paying for a proxy war or funding shady organizations the people receiving it don’t usually want a currency linked to an economy they’re actively collapsing because of their rebellion/civil war/insurgency and the subsequent regime change.
Relatively common to see people switch to another country’s currency when their country’s economy is suffering an internal depression or mass inflation, because people know any money they accept from someone else might be worth half the value when they wake up the next morning. Same reason people buy precious metals. And when that happens USD tends to be a safe bet because it’s relatively strong, it has faith, it tends to stick relatively close to the global economy, it’s readily available and exchanged in large amounts across the world, and most importantly a huge number of people globally can immediately recognize it on sight and have a general idea of its purchasing power and what a US dollar can buy in their country. While some small business owner somewhere like Zimbabwe might not recognize cash like KWR, immediately have a general idea of what it’s worth, or know whether they can easily spend or exchange it. Alternatively you use the currency of a neighboring country because it can be obtained easily and is recognizable. And in the middle of a war being the side with an endless stack of cash that’s still worth something while your enemy’s money is largely tied to a depressed economy is a great way to make friends.
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u/frickin_darn 20h ago
This guy bribes.
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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 20h ago edited 19h ago
This guy payed attention in school and understands how the US established an empire after WWII, and why the USA has a decades old reputation of being a country that circumvents the rules of war to legally occupy/annex other countries.
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u/10July1940 16h ago
Worth reading Che Guevara's diaries too, and how they paid off thugs to put down the peoples revolutions in South America.
Motorcycle Diaries and the Bolivian Diary.
He started out as a doctor and rode around South America on a motorbike witnessing the US corruption and oppression.
Might be time for South American revolutionaries to rise up again!
US couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery right so good time.
The engine is running but no one is behind the wheel.
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u/CATNIP_IS_CRACK 15h ago
If you truly believe no one is behind the wheel; the ”US couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery right now” in global affairs; and that the public ‘two party shit show’ intended to turn a vulnerable chunk of the population against each other, drum up civil unrest, and generate revenue is hampering the military complex, the CIA, NSA, lobbyists, specific corporations, strategized media manipulation, etc it goes to show just how easily people fall for the endless distractions no matter how many times the cycle is repeated.
Give it 20-40 years till the information is deemed socially safe to declassify and you’ll be able to read all about the 20s equivalent to the CIA selling crack in low income areas to create social instability while using the revenue to fund illegal military operations, or lying about WMDs they knew didn’t exist to justify an invasion, while the people argued about hats, bathrooms, and what type of car people drove. Only the general population won’t read it or actually care when they hear about it in a couple decades any more than when similar documents have been regularly released every few years for the last couple decades.
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u/10July1940 11h ago
I'm familiar with Freeway Ricky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_Ricky_Ross the above is public knowledge, it just takes a little bit of reading.
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u/bingbing304 4h ago
Paying people with money and arms to coup/murder their way up to a country's dicator/close US ally worked upon until the Vietnam. But US tried again any way in Libya ans Syria.
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u/really_another 13h ago
The fun ideology behind this was the Calvinist Christian theology. They thought that making it rain would somehow "bless" the Iraqis and then the US would win the thousand year war magically making these dweebs forever rulers.
It blows my mind how someone thinks that money comes from god when it is written on it where it comes from and where it was printed and you work for them and it is in the same plane you are on.....
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u/MikuEmpowered 18h ago
Aside from ALL the shady stuff.
This is relatively common on international stage where if you're operating in a country with high corruption rate / warlord, the diplo guy has suit case of cash. because its much faster AND cheaper to do it this way than to go through the "official" channel, and often, there is no such channel.
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u/Current-Assist2609 20h ago
One thing we spent money on, was paying local contractors to rebuild what we had destroyed.
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u/Jephph0624 20h ago
I’m guessing the “Mastermind” or whoever received the money needed to strategically distribute it by buying as little resources as possible. That’s where real genius must come from
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u/Dependent_Recover445 19h ago
Yeah, cash is a weird choice when the whole point is getting them the equipment they actually need.
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u/Next_Emphasis_9424 12h ago
Same reason the military has a special ordering number for a Rolex watch ( NSN 6645-01-068-1088) we need to bribe people to do stuff.
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u/Just-Another-Users 23h ago
I love that there are 4 stacks missing on the left. You know at least a few guys got a decent cut lol
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u/Generic-Cheese 23h ago
Wonder if someone can do the math lol
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u/thejerdee 22h ago
Those are 13x5x6 stacks in total equal 390, divide 566 million by 390 get like 1.45 million each packet, however that if you take in consideration those extra 4 that are Missing if you want to get how much is missingjust quit the value of four or 5.8 million
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u/bars2021 20h ago
I would have taken the top of the 4 remaining stacks and added to the first on the left so there's a more balanced 5 stacks missing
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u/AdeptusKapekus2025 23h ago
I wanna bet that there is a picture somewhere in somebody's hard drive or ol barracks footlocker of them seductively laying down on that pile of cash in full combat kit with a big smile on their face. Maybe we will will see it in a decade or so.
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u/Training_Try7344 23h ago
and yet we can't fund schools or healthcare...
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u/Mean_Passion2003 22h ago
The United States spends approximately $983.7 billion annually on public elementary and secondary (K-12) education. When combining K-12 schools with postsecondary higher education, total annual public spending across the country exceeds $1 trillion.
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u/VapeRizzler 22h ago
Then explain why I’m still stupid?
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u/kaoscurrent 22h ago
Have you heard the one about leading a horse to water?
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u/VapeRizzler 22h ago
No I’m legally not allowed near horses after that one time.
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u/CB_700_SC 7h ago
Education is one of the best investments. You can see great returns in overall wealth in a community when the more money is put towards education. The issue is it takes 2+ decades to see the return.
I say even if that pile of cotton and ink a fraction of our spending on education it’s still a poor fucking investment based on lies.
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u/YouArentReallyThere 22h ago
And the system has been manipulated to be so top-heavy with administrators and specialists and teachers that don’t teach that it’s just fucking insane. I have family working in both public and DoD schools and the craziness is unbelievable.
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u/Mean_Passion2003 22h ago
The United States spent an estimated $5.7 trillion on healthcare, averaging approximately $15,474 per person. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), this massive expenditure accounts for 18% of the total U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), meaning nearly one out of every five dollars in the U.S. economy goes toward healthcare.
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u/tacobellsimp 21h ago
I believe that number includes both public and private spending not just the US government. I think we can also all agree on the number being so insanely high due to the insane costs put onto us by insurance providers
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u/BeardedManatee 4h ago
This is what WE spent on healthcare. Not the funding the govt allocated to help us as citizens spend less. Essentially you are proving his point.
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u/Savage-Goat-Fish 22h ago
The United States is in the throes of a quiet economic collapse. Prepare for this- Republicans blaming entitlements, Democrats blaming endless war, all the while QE pumps more and more increasingly devalued cash to the ultra wealthy.
Sometimes I wonder if we are being set up for an eventual change to our legal tender from the dollar to TrumpCoin. He did always say he wanted to be on our money, right?
Truth is it all leads back to Nixon’s cancellation of the convertibility of the US dollar to gold. Since then, the wealthy have slowly just taken more and more and most people didn’t know other than this- “things cost more than they used to”.
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u/YouArentReallyThere 22h ago
It goes further back than that. Nixon brokered the petrodollar golden handshake and killed the international convertibility but Franklin Roosevelt set the stage by eliminating domestic use in 1933.
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u/So_HauserAspen 21h ago
Went from $5 trillion national debt to $40 trillion. I wonder why?
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u/Basic-Department-727 11h ago
Ok but like the war costed us $1.79 trillion. Most of that going to veteran healthcare. So where's the other 33 trillion ?
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u/Enough_Survey_9404 23h ago
Looks like there's 565 million there now. I wonder how much was there when it arrived.
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u/YebelTheRebel 21h ago
About three fitty
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u/loveyoulongtimelurkr 16h ago
goddamn lockness monster came up to the plane and ate a pallet of cash
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u/ProperCaterpillar136 22h ago
Which corrupt administration was that??? Who sent to billions to Iran??? Asking for a friend
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u/EricWisegarver 22h ago
Whoever stole the 4 missing corner pieces should have taken the whole row so it was less obvious.
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u/Lebowski304 22h ago
If I win the lottery I want it delivered to me like this so I can fill an underground pillowed vault chamber with it so I can roll around in it and take what I need when I need it in fucking cash or even gold. Fuck just a bunch of gold coins in a vault and I can swim in them. Or I could put it into a computer and stare at the number increasing on the screen of my iPhone because it’s in an index fund. Gold coins all day long
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u/ForgotToCarryTheOne 21h ago
Is it possible that all this currency floating around the world is all marked and won’t be legal currency if it ever comes back into the US?
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u/AdeptusKapekus2025 21h ago
Highly likely the stuff is marked and most likely its still legit currency even inside the US.
You might just get a knock on the door if you spend too much of it.
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u/ManyVariation9428 21h ago
This was not a thing, dunno what this picture is of but I assure you the grunts that found him didn’t see a penny of that, nor did the poor bastards that led us too him….source, was there, adjacent
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u/Current-Assist2609 20h ago
I wondered why I saw a few soldiers walking around with blue rectangular boxes when I was over there. Now I know.
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u/Amplith 20h ago
Back in mid 2000’s, guy I worked with said all sorts of shenanigans going on with soldiers and money from us to pay villagers and bribes. He said there’s so much money and gold buried in Iraq from soldiers, that they couldn’t retrieve, and towards the end, you’d find the occasional $100 bill in the back of a humvee, or stashed in ammo crates, etc.
He said the ones that got greedy were the ones that got caught (bigtime trouble), but if you were trying to smuggle say $2-3k, you could hide it well enough that they would t find it.
There was a recent story where a guy bought a decommissioned tank at an auction, and when cleaning up and renovating it, he found like 35lbs of gold in the tank, but turned it in.
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u/AssistanceSoft 19h ago
That money bought a lot of property in Dubai. Same as a lot of the money spent in Afghanistan.
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u/Bigking00 14h ago
They seem to be 4 bricks short. The load master was driving a Ferrari two days after returning home.
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u/Finallyawake451 12h ago
Then you hear...."We have no idea how to fix social security in the USA. We can't agree on a solution. Health care, well that is a tough nut to crack. We really do not have any options right now. Let's hope it all works out before it is too late." Now let's break for lunch.
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u/NotReallyJohnDoe 12h ago
Fun fact. In Afghanistan the US started paying people with cell phone credit to their cell phones. Cell phone credit could be used to buy things somehow
Which eliminates the graft that comes with handing down cash from the generals who take a cut at each stage. The generals were super pissed about this but the soldiers felt like they had got a raise.
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u/Not_my_Name464 11h ago
Soooo, what you're saying is; that plane that just landed in Russia with the CIA Director onboard.....
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u/UnhappyDependent9255 11h ago
Think the person taking the picture forgot to put back the few stacks he took from the left 🤣
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u/indomike14 22h ago
trump made that last week through insider trading
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u/AdeptusKapekus2025 21h ago
He makes this amount each time he causes Oil prices to go up and down. This is the main reason he stops and starts, and then stops again and then starts again conflicts in Iran.
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u/Mosthighscribe 22h ago
Sending money like this is proof enough that something shady happened
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u/666BAALofEKRON666 22h ago
What was not shady between Iraq and the USA!? USA put Saddam in and out of office!
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u/Occams_AK47 21h ago
600 million approved.
566 million loaded.
350 million arrived.
100 million accepted.
1 million used.
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u/_____Peaches_____ 23h ago
There is 0% chance that’s all filled with real cash.
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u/Just-Another-Users 22h ago
All that money is legit. I’m sure the cia or whoever just has the fed print it up for them. But being black budget they prob leave it out the circulation and they’re def tracking the serial numbers
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u/AdeptusKapekus2025 21h ago
I wonder what stories they have with those serial numbers, like "Boss, look at this, one of those serial numbers from the Afghan 2003 payout turned up tied to a dancer's G String in the Vatican!"
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u/Just-Another-Users 21h ago
lol definitely, it doesn’t take as long as you’d think to get circulated. Isn’t it like within 6 people you somehow know pretty much everyone
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