Money, Money

Friends,
We have seen firsthand what the Bush fiscal policy has done to our economy. The figure of three trillion dollars has been put forward as the cost of the Iraqi war. Our bill for Iraqi reconstruction is now around 48 billion dollars. Now, more good news. The good ol' U.S. of A. is bankrolling the reconstruction of Iraq, even as Iraq deposits a portion of it's 79 billion dollar budget surplus in U.S. banks.
The tragety of the Iraq war continues to affect all Americans.

Peace and Love,
Rev O

As Iraq Surplus Rises, Little Goes Into Rebuilding
New York Times

“The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large-scale reconstruction projects,” Mr. Levin, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a joint statement with Mr. Warner. “It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank.”

From the beginning of the conflict, American officials assured taxpayers and the world that Iraq would use oil money to pay for reconstruction. But that has not happened. Several senior Iraqi officials were either traveling on Tuesday or declined to comment, saying they were not familiar with the report.

"But one finding that is sure to raise questions all around is the enormous pileup of cash in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as well as several Iraqi banks, Ms. Alexander said. The money in New York is a legacy of a system set up to handle Iraqi oil revenues when the country had no capacity to do so on it's own.
The purpose of the money was to rebuild Iraq, not draw interest in a bank, Ms. Alexander said. “I don’t know what function that serves right now. In my mind it raises another set of questions which is, ‘Who’s minding the store?’ ” she said.

"The deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank is so large that the United States has been obliged to make $435.6 million in interest payments to Iraq through the end of last year, according to the new report."

“I admit that there is some delay in spending the money on the projects in the provinces and in the ministries,” Mr. Baban said. “We have problems in this issue because there are lots of obstacles we face, because of the situation that we’re going through. We’re trying to deal with that, we’re trying to improve things, but you know the situation in Iraq.”

As Iraq Surplus Rises, Little Goes Into Rebuilding
By JAMES GLANZ and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON New York Times