The problem with the whole 'blood for oil/imperialist west Vs noble-savage east' narrative is that pesky little facts keep getting in the way. Today, for example, the democratically elected Iraqi Government discussed its first major international oil deal with the Zionist, neo-con state of, er, China. Iraq also announced that it would send cut price oil to its neighbours, Jordan and Lebanon. In the meantime the United States Government Accountability Office, (Explanation that’s an impartial, investigative body which is wholly independent of the Presidency and party politics), has found that American taxpayers have spent $48 billion on the reconstruction of Iraq since 2003. In the same period the Iraqi Government has spent just $3.9 billion on similar services despite the fact that the Iraqi Government will post a $79 billion budget surplus this year.
In fact Western countries have waived Iraq’s debts whilst Iraq’s Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian ‘brothers’ continue to pressure it to pay back billions of dollars in loans and reparations. The fight to depose Saddam Hussein, defend a democratic Government from terrorists and stop a civil war has cost the American economy $3 trillion, I’m not a professional economist but if America fought this war for profit then something doesn’t quite add up.
The Government Accountability Office Report found that American taxpayers have spent $48 billion on reconstructing Iraq whilst Iraq has earned $156 billion in oil exports since 2005, money that would previously have gone straight into the pockets of a really evil privatised company, Saddam Hussein’s Family PLC. Now I appreciate that it may well be difficult for the Iraqi Government to spend the $79 billion budget surplus on reconstruction at the moment but why do people denigrate America when it is virtually the only country in the world which is paying for Iraq’s reconstruction?
And how much has America actually made from the whole Iraq thing, assuming for sake of argument that that was the point of the whole exercise?
Well this independent and impartial report details all oil revenues and exports from Iraq since 2003 and it doesn’t list a single cent as going to the U.S. Government. Nothing, nada, zero, zilch, rien.
For the first time in Iraq’s history a democratic and reasonably accountable Government controls the country’s oil wealth. At the moment American taxpayers are funding the vast majority of Iraq’s reconstruction, this won’t continue forever and American combat forces will be out of Iraq by 2010. The two biggest threats to Iraq’s future are sectarian strife and Government corruption but still there is room to hope that the worst periods of Iraq’s history are in the past. Let us all work together to secure a future for a prosperous, democratic and free Iraq.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-08-19-voa59.cfm?rss=middleeast
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/world/middleeast/06surplus.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp
http://www.slate.com/id/2197007/
http://touchingfromadistance.blog.co.uk
2008-08-24 @ 13:58