Chutzpah
Try reading this without your blood boiling:
That's pretty audacious.
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."
The issue of Baghdad's contribution to the costs of the war jumped to the forefront early in April during testimony to Congress of the Iraq war commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Noting that the soaring price of oil is likely to give Iraq a revenue bonanza this year of up to $70 billion, senators quizzed the two on why Iraq isn't using its rising oil income to pay more of the costs of reconstruction.
That's pretty audacious.
Labels:
World politics and history
3 comments:
agreed.
similarly the economist has a piece arguing that the gulf countries should take advantage of high oil prices to help out in iraq.
that isn't a very bad idea, but there's still an assumption that putting more money in, while keeping american troops will help solve the problem.
not to mention the negative pr that already unpopular arab countries would get.
the economist is right wing trash. in my opinion.
you should have titled this post "beyond chutzpah" a la finkelstein's literary response to alan dershowitz.
Post a Comment