AP: U.S. Squabble Holding Up Iraq Aid

[Barrett808]

AP: U.S. Squabble Holding Up Iraq Aid
By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - It will be the biggest American attempt to change the face of Iraq since the invasion: $18.6 billion from U.S. taxpayers for rebuilding. Yet a U.S. bureaucratic squabble is holding up the money.

The aid package approved by Congress last month amounts to nearly two-thirds of Iraq's annual economic output in 2002, estimated by the World Bank at $28 billion. By summer, the pipeline of dollars is expected to turn Iraq into one of the world's largest construction sites.

But the contract proposals, which were to be released for bids on Dec. 3, are being held up by an apparent turf battle between the U.S. departments of Defense and State.

The dispute, described by U.S. officials on condition of anonymity, centers on the State Department and its co-agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, vying for some of the contracting authority from the Pentagon (news - web sites)-led occupation administration of Iraq, known as the Coalition Provisional Authority.

The State Department believes it can better oversee contracts because it will take the chief U.S. diplomatic role in Iraq on July 1, when power transfers to Iraqis. Then the CPA will be absorbed by the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=2&u=/ap/20031221/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_the_big_money_1

[Snazzy]

1. Less than $2B of the $87B package actually goes to Iraq

Article later drops this bombshell:

Only an estimated 20 percent of the funds will be spent inside Iraq — just under $2 billion each in 2004 and 2005. The rest will go to foreign contractors and suppliers

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Amazing.

[grasswire]

2. and those contractors...

...are hiring non-Iraqis to do the work, even the hard menial labor. They're bringing in cheap labor from Asia and other places, rather than hiring Iraqis.

[Snazzy]

4. Which means still more ever-unemployed pissed Iraqis

Like there weren't enough. Or like no one ever thought putting them to work might be a good plan. Pilage and payola. Fire the Army, destroy existing companies, take over resources and property on a permanent basis, outsource everything. Let's ensure all 8 million or so Iraqi men are pissed off enough to attack us. Then we can kill them, right?

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. Friggen amazing ! - no problem getting $$$ to blow Iraq to crap tho ! ?

. . And the Befuddled Murikan sheeples just change the Channel

. (sigh) .

[pinto]

5. ask your Congressman why an Inspector General was not appointed

to oversee contracts in Iraq. Very up front and simple governmental oversight function. It was brought up during budget negotiations...Ask your Congressman, he or she ought to have an answer.