| Iraqi oil revenues are not going to pay for Iraqi reconstruction after all. |
| In April 2003, the head of USAID said the cost of rebuilding Iraq wouldn't "even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.” Iraqi reconstruction has cost the United States $34.1 billion to date. Rebuilding postwar Germany cost $30.3 billion (in 2006 dollars).
Corruption costs Iraq $4 billion annually. $8.8 billion the U.S. gave the Iraqi government cannot be fully accounted for. More than 20% of the government's Ministry of Interior staff are "ghost employees" - nonexistent workers who collect paychecks. As much as 30% of Iraq's refined oil ends up on the black market or is illegally taken out of the country. The U.S. government says the insurgency raises $25 to $100 million a year smuggling oil. $9 billion in oil revenues has been lost, almost as much as Saddam Hussein stole from the U.N. Oil-for-Food program over five years. Source: "The Cost: Paying the Price" Mother Jones - March/April 2007 Issue |
|
Read what others have said about this statement here.
Use the section at the bottom of the screen to submit your own comment. | ||
| Comments | Contributor | Date Submitted |
| Bush has handled this whole Iraq thing so well. What a twit. Is the U.S. going to have to crash and burn before people realize what a mistake electing him twice was? | Linda Denton |
4/27/2007 |
| The American people didn't elect Bush once, never mind twice. | Webmaster SpinShield |
6/30/2007 |
Submit your comment below | ||