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June 22, 2004
We have always spent Iraqi money on that
"You want to hire everybody on the street, put money in their pockets and make them like you. We have always spent Iraqi money on that."
It turns out our oft-repeated generosity towards Iraq mainly involves using Iraqi money distributed as cash in $100 bills by American military teams roaming the country -- all the while spending very little of the actual aid money designated by Congress as Iraqi reconstruction funds, and even that only as contracts to corrupt and wasteful American firms that do very little reconstruction and very little hiring of Iraqis.
It’s really unbelievable. You have to keep pondering the numbers to let it all sink.
It turns out that, of the $18 billion designated for reconstruction, as little as half a billion might have been actually spent. Meanwhile, we are currently rushing to spend about $2.5 billions of current Iraqi oil revenues on “ill-conceived projects” before June 30 when control of that money would pass to the Interim Government. We have also already spent one or two billion in Iraqi frozen assets -- we don’t know the exact number because who’s counting when it’s their money? And, most of that spending is contracts to American companies or bribes and pay-offs distributed by Americans.
And yet, in spite of these facts, “all this money” we are spending on rebuilding Iraq has been prominent in the talking points of both the left and the right. In fact, I have seen many commentators on the left complain that we were spending money on Iraq when schools here are crumbling. It’s true enough that many public schools are in dire need of funds and attention but the problem is certainly not that we are spending money on Iraqi reconstruction. Of course, by any minimal standards of justice, we should actually spend money on Iraq since we broke the country through the sanctions and the war. It turns out we are just complaining about spending the money while spending their money as we please.
Remember the $87 billion that Bush asked for the war earlier on? Well, only $18.7 billion of it was allocated for reconstruction of Iraq -- the rest is funds for the United States military to function while occupying Iraq. Some of it, like soldiers salaries, would have been spent anyway. Some are expenses due to the occupation but that’s hardly money we are spending on Iraq. Of that money, only a small sum has been awarded in contracts:
About $3.7 billion of this package had been spent by June 1, according to the CPA. Many projects that have received funding have slowed or stopped entirely because Western firms have withdrawn employees from Iraq in response to attacks on civilian contractors.
Note that even that supposed $3.7 billion is not money that is actually spent. It’s actually contracts “awarded”.
Only $3.2 billion in contracts for actual construction projects have been awarded, although the number could rise before June 30.
It’s hard to come by the money actually spent, thanks to the lack of transparency with the CPA. However, reports are that it might be as little as half a billion dollars:
"Only some $500 million has been spent of the $18.7 billion" Congress authorized for reconstruction, said an administration official familiar with the transition plans.
Of course, note how these projects stop when Western firms withdraw employees. Because instead of being contracts that use local resources and generate revenue and employment for the local economy, most these are contracts to Halliburton, Bechtel et al:
Because many of the 2,300 projects to be funded by the $18.6 billion are large construction endeavors that will involve foreign laborers instead of Iraqis, they will result in far less of a local economic boost than the CPA had promised, another senior official involved in the reconstruction said. The projects were chosen largely without input from Iraqis.
The number of Iraqis employed by our generosity in a country with desperate levels of unemployment? According to the Post, only 15,000 in a country of 22 million.
About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid
What we are doing is spending Iraqi oil money and doing it as quickly as we can before the “handover”:
With international attention focused on the impending transfer of power in Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority is committing billions of dollars to ill-conceived projects just before it dissolves, according to a new briefing by the Open Society Institute's Iraq Revenue Watch Project. The briefing, Iraqi Fire Sale: CPA Giving Away Oil Revenue Billions Before Transition, says that the U.S.-controlled Program Review Board in charge of managing Iraq's finances recently approved the expenditure of nearly $2 billion dollars in Iraqi funds for reconstruction projects.
The New York Times picked up on the story a few days ago:
Struggling with bureaucratic problems in spending the money appropriated by Congress to rebuild Iraq, American authorities are moving quietly and quickly to spend $2.5 billion from a different source, Iraqi oil revenue, for projects employing tens of thousands of Iraqis, especially in the country's hot spots, Bush administration officials say.
On top of using Iraqi oil revenues, we have also spent frozen Iraqi assets as we pleased:
Some of the money has gone to American military teams operating since the beginning of the occupation 14 months ago. The teams have become famous in Iraq for the way they have spread across the country, commissioning repairs and paying for them from satchels bulging with $100 bills shipped by plane from a Federal Reserve vault in East Rutherford, N.J. Much of that money came from Iraqi assets frozen in the United States during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.At least $1 billion has been distributed in this fashion - by some estimates more than $2 billion.
"The military commanders love that program, because it buys them friends," said an administration official, referring to the cash distribution. "You want to hire everybody on the street, put money in their pockets and make them like you. We have always spent Iraqi money on that."
So, after the handover, Iraqis will have much less money to spend as they wish while “ambassador” Negroponte will be left with significant sums to distribute, adding to the degree of control already provided by 138,000 troops over any Iraqi government the people of Iraq might wish to elect.
Welcome to our efforts to promote democracy, sovereignty and transparency in the Middle East.
And don’t let anyone tell you our schools are crumbling because we are instead spending that money on schools in Iraq. Whatever's crumbling --here or there-- is crumbling because this administration simply prefers to spend money as much as possible on enriching their cronies, and mostly in ways that enhance their control, and as little as possible on projects that do some actual good.
Posted by zeynep at June 22, 2004 05:53 PM
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Comments
It is difficult to fully absorb and comprehend these levels of American incompetence and corruption. Once again the deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance have primed yet another western imperial calamity of proportions that defy the ability of language to adequately convey. I worked for 31 years in a local government bureaucracy that had its share of incompetence and corruption. But the program I worked in for the last 23 of those 31 years had a measely 13 million dollar annual budget when I retired last August. I have great difficulty comprehending these multi-billion dollar federal boondoggles. It is totally mind-boggling that the neo-cons could have so totally misread the cultural, social, economic, and political realities of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Not that some of us didn't understand the stupidity and criminality of their ambitious plans and proposals. Just as mind-boggling is that so many Americans continue to buy the wall-to-wall lies being floated by the Bush Administration to cover-up their crimes and the total mess and quagmire that they've created in Iraq.
Words and language are inadequate to cover this level of depravity. We all try but personally I am in way over my head when it comes to really being able to comprehend this level of corruption and then expressing my corresponding feelings regarding this corruption. You do it better than I do, Zeynep, but it is really beyond the capacity of one individual--any individual--to do comprehensively. I give you credit for trying but...my god!!...the immorality of my government is off the friggin' scale.
I will keep reading, of course, but this stuff can really be demoralizing at times. And I'm here in California where basic services still function somewhat adequately at least relative to Iraq. BUT WHAT OF THE IRAQIS? HOW DO THEY MANAGE TO CONTINUE TO SURVIVE?
It seems to me that Hannah Arendt is very correct when she writes that it takes a revolutionary to continue to speak the truth in the face of the kind of reactionary propaganda that now rules American culture and American society. In this vein, Zeynep, we become revolutionaries against the 1984-style American gulag mentality that now tries to dominate the entire planet.
Sorry this was so long. I intended a much shorter response. Peace to you if that is still possible in light of current events. Keep up your invaluable service. Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Old & In The Way
Posted by: Phil Cicchi at June 22, 2004 09:16 PM
STAGGERING........worst suspicion confirmed yet again.
Posted by: anna mist at June 23, 2004 01:26 AM
The new ruler of Iraq, John Negroponte, euphemistically referred to as the "U.S." Ambassador, is Jewish! And Israel has agents in Iraq training Kurdish commandos and collecting intelligence from Kurds in Syria and Iran. Everything looks good from the perspective of Jerusalem, as preparations to extend the war move forward at the behest of the world's most lovable ethnic group.
Posted by: that's chutzpah at June 23, 2004 01:57 PM
The previous comment is not only an anti-Jewish slur, it doesn't address the real problem with John Negroponte: his support of Nicaraguan death squads and the brutal military dictatorship in Honduras while he was U.S. ambassador or his role in the Vietnam war, for example. For people interested in a serious discussion, these and many other career highlights can be found at http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=John_Negroponte .
Posted by: zeynep at June 23, 2004 03:02 PM
interesting
Posted by: koos at June 23, 2004 06:45 PM
The Israelis are as much terrorists as Saddam ever was! What are they training Kurds in Syria and Iran to do? Act as traffic wardens? Are they fuck. They are sponsoring terrorism just like the Americans and British did with the INA in Iraq.
Posted by: b at June 23, 2004 06:51 PM
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