Iraq: US Has No Claim to Oil Boom

By Cliff Schecter, Cliff Schecter's Blog
Posted on May 1, 2008, Printed on December 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://agonist.org/schecter//84129/

Even though Colin Powell never really said it, it’s still spot on. “You break it, you bought it.”

BAGHDAD — As Congress gears up to debate the Bush administration’s latest request for an additional $108 billion in war funding for Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraqis are fuming at suggestions being floated by lawmakers that Baghdad should start paying a share of the war’s costs by providing cheap fuel to the U.S. military.

“America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,” said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq’s Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi government spending. “This is an immoral request because we didn’t ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn’t have all these needs.”

© 2009 Cliff Schecter's Blog All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://agonist.org/schecter//84129/