United Press International, Inc. said:http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/08/06/Little_found_spent_on_Iraq_reconstruction/UPI-53151218022464/
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Revelations that Iraq has banked $79 billion in unspent oil revenues instead of using the funds on reconstruction is "inexcusable," two U.S. senators say.
Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John Warner, R-Va., said Tuesday it is unfair for the United States to fund Iraqi reconstruction projects when an investigation found, among other things, that Iraq has spent only $3.9 billion on critical infrastructure while U.S. taxpayers have contributed $23.2 billion since 2003, The New York Times reported.
"The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large-scale reconstruction projects," the senators said in a joint statement. "It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves."
Other items revealed in the General Accounting Office report on Iraq include revelations that Iraq spent 28 percent of its $12 billion reconstruction budget, with $2 billion of the spending taking place in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region; and that from 2005-07, Iraq spent only 1 percent of its operating budget to maintaining reconstruction projects that had been built with either U.S. or Iraqi money, the Times reported.
I think it is time to stop the checks Mr. Bush.
While I've been saying that they need to work harder at improving their conditions, it's hard to argue that we have to help since we are the ones that bombed the hell out of em.
captainzib...i sort of agree with you. After all, we bombed the hell out of Germany, then we turned around and developed the Marshall plan, which the last I had heard Germany never completely repaid the U.S. for. We bombed Japan, did we charge them for any help in the reconstruction?
Moreover did THEY assist in their own rebuilding?
Maybe we could swap governments. I'd be proud to have a politcian that didn't have to spend every dime at his disposal.
poor project management from the Bush prospective..
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if we weren't paying for the reconstruction, it wouldn't get done.
It's mostly US companies getting the contracts, so at least the money is staying state-side (for the most part).
It is mostly ONE U.S. company.
It rhymes with Paliburton.
Hey! Read the sign at the boarder!:
You Blow It Up, You Pay For It
Hey aircooled....now that you mention it, when Colin Powell warned "W" before we invaded Iraq that "if you break it, you own it" do you suppose this it what he really meant? (You blow it up, you pay for it)
"Paliburton" is no longer a US company. They moved to the United Arab Emirates.
Also, Blackwater was once a part of Haliburton. They split Blackwater off years ago, but they are related.
Blackwater Security was founded by Eric Prince who used to own the company I interned at. They have nothing to do with Haliburton. Now there is a Prince-Busch family connection but nothing to Haliburton.
I believe the biggest contractor in Iraq as far as reconstruction goes is Bechtel.
Sorry, I was mistaken about the Blackwater ties to Haliburton. It was Kellog-Brown& Root:
Following the end of the Gulf War, the Pentagon, led by then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones.[9]
Thomas H. Cruikshank, who served as chairman and CEO from 1989 until 1995, was replaced by Dick Cheney.
KBR employs more American private contractors and holds a larger contract with the U.S. government than does any other firm in Iraq. The company's roughly 14,000 U.S. employees in Iraq provide logistical support to the U.S. armed forces.[7]
So many of these companies have ties to each other it is hard to keep it straight.
I got this from Wiki, so who knows how valid it is.
I refer to the private security and rebuilding firms in general as Paliburton for that same reason.
If you add the cost of the war operations (you choose what number you think is accurate $300b., 400b., 600b. ?) add that to the Green Zone project which is NOT directly counted as Iraqi spending and the cost of rebuilding then divide that number by the number of actual Iraqis living in Iraq...
It is a little shocking.
