Cash Payments In Iraq?

If I go to my local bank and try to deposit more than $10,000 cash, all sorts of questions will be asked of my by the bank officers. So how is it even possible that it's okay for the United States government to pay BILLIONS IN CASH to people in Iraq? This story: U.S. was big spender in days before Iraq handover - Yahoo! News boggles my mind.

What's the problem with good old-fashioned checks? Has Uncle Sam been bouncing checks again? Or what about wire transfers? Or is the problem simply that in war-torn countries, banks are rather unreliable, and most people only want cold, hard currency?

If so, that's fine. But are we tracking that cash properly? Because it seems like an awful lot of money was spent in an awfully short period of time. It sort of smells like payola...

More later...
Paul