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June 29, 2004
Who Wants to Guess Where the Car Bomb Will Go Off Today?
Readers of this blog know that I've been covering the story of how little of the money allocated by Congress for Iraqi reconstruction has been actually spent, while billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues and Iraqi frozen assets has been spent in a mad dash, without accountability or transparency, sometimes on no-bid contracts to Halliburton. It's been hard to find out how little of the $18.7 has been actually spent but repeated references seem to put it under half a billion. Here's the latest mention, from today's New York Times, putting the number at $400 million:
Another part of the strategy is the speeding of the reconstruction financing, which many officials acknowledge has been frustratingly slow. Of the $18 billion authorized by Congress last year, which Mr. Powell had hoped would be spent by now, only about $5 billion has been awarded to contractors, and less than $400 million has been spent.
Not to worry, though. Our ingenuity and resources will be used to do what we do best. We'll put Allawi on television a lot, to help create the appearance of a strong leader leading a sovereign nation:
At the same time, American officials say that the United States will mobilize all its state-of-the-art television equipment on projecting images of Dr. Allawi around the country, and do its best to publicize his actions and provide secure transportation.
United States will provide secure transportation? Is that the hallmark of a sovereign leader in the new world order: being unable to travel around your own country without protection from foreign troops?
Maybe the security and the publicity needs should be merged in a reality show: "Who Wants to Guess Where the Car Bomb Will Go Off Today?" The audience can call in with guesses and the survivors, ahem, winners could receive fuel for their generators so they can watch more of Allawi on television even during the intermittent blackouts.
In case you think I'm just being over the top sarcastic, here's a spot from the recently launched Al-Sharqiya, Iraq's first privately owned TV channel:
A journalist stops a man in a Baghdad street and asks about the security situation. The man cheerfully replies: "Security has vastly improved, we used to go home at 7:30 p.m. but now we can stay out as late as 7:45!"A sound effect of an explosion during the conversation shakes the camera, adding a tongue-in-cheek dose of reality to the comedy clip by a new Iraqi channel aiming to win audiences with a unique style of political and social satire.
Posted by zeynep at June 29, 2004 12:28 AM
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