I remember reading a while back that at some point at the beginning of our time ...

yholio · on Oct 22, 2021

Why, as kickbacks to the future taliban government, a.k.a the former democratic leadership of Afghanistan, of course.

hunterb123 · on Oct 22, 2021

We have a habit of doing that:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/politics/us-sends-plane-iran-...

knownjorbist · on Oct 22, 2021

This isn't the same at all, other than it's a lot of money going somewhere in the middle east.

It was their own money being returned to them and not pallets earmarked for development disappearing into the night.

hunterb123 · on Oct 22, 2021

Well that's the official story. The ulterior is it was basically a ransom payment for hostages released at the same time.

But really I was just noting how we love sending pallets of cash to our adversaries.

We have no way of knowing how they spent those pallets of bank notes in either exchange.

The whole point was our government loves to use cash in deals yet label civilians with too much cash as criminals!

knownjorbist · on Oct 22, 2021

The former was not sending pallets of cash to our adversaries.

Agreed that asset forfeiture should be illegal.

hunterb123 · on Oct 26, 2021

> then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.

> Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States.

Literally in the article GP linked. You could argue that we don't know for sure, but the US sends cash around willy nilly that can easily fall in the hands of terrorists while treating Americans like criminals if they have anything above pocket change.