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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131129)	5/3/2004 10:58:27 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And they have $18 Billion reasons to desire a continued US presence. ... of which only a small part has been used for reconstruction, and another part has already been diverted for other purposes. Rebuilding Aid Unspent, Tapped to Pay Expenses By Jonathan Weisman and Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, April 30, 2004; Page A01 washingtonpost.com Seven months after Congress approved the largest foreign aid package in history to rebuild Iraq, less than 5 percent of the $18.4 billion has been spent and occupation officials have begun shifting more than $300 million earmarked for reconstruction projects to administrative and security expenses. Recent reports from the Coalition Provisional Authority, the CPA's inspector general and the U.S. Agency for International Development attest to the growing difficulties of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. And they have raised concerns in Congress and among international aid experts that the Bush administration's ambitious rebuilding campaign is adrift amid rising violence and unforeseen costs. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), chairman of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, cited "bureaucratic infighting" and a "loss of central command and control" at a hearing yesterday as he sharply questioned top administration officials: "I have very serious concerns about the pace of assistance in Iraq and the management of those funds." ...

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (131129)	5/3/2004 11:21:39 AM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If it's a free and fair election... By our standards, it won't be. You would have to be totally detached from reality to think it's going to be a free and fair election by anything close to our standards. Do you see US troops going into Fallujah to guard the polling stations? And they have $18 Billion reasons to desire a continued US presence. I doubt that $18B means much at all to the Iraqi on the street. Keep in mind that the US has recently changed the reward for the capture of OBL to include farm animals and equipment because the Afghanis don't understand $M. Admittedly, the Iraqi urban population has a better grasp of $, but they are also going to look at their own oil reserves, under their control. The people in Fallujah [300,000] voting to keep the US in Iraq...really? And there's the reality that they live in a very hostile neighborhood.... The downside to "democracy" is that the people don't necessarily vote what is best for them. They vote with their gut. And reading the polls, their gut tells them that the US should get out of Iraq now. IMO, the probability that Iraqis will opt for an immediate exit of US Forces is very high. As the election gets close and if the outcome looks that way, there are some obvious options...1) Delay the elections...that's problematic, 2) Declare the elections to be not fair and free...that's problematic. I would suggest that the only viable option that the US has is to begin withdrawing [right now] all Coalition Forces from areas in Iraq that are relatively peaceful and make a huge PR deal of it; illustrating that the US is not an occupier. According to the Administration, this is a large segment of Iraq. If the local governments want a coalition presence to remain, let them publicly beg for it on Al Jazeera. The US has between now and January to convince the majority of Iraqis that we're liberators, not occupiers and we should stay. If we have to leave Iraq, are we going to return our military forces to Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? Current opinion in those countries makes it problematic for their governments to accept an increase in Forces in their countries. jttmab