Iraq’s deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they’ve extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.
The payments, in return for the insurgents’ allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.
Apparently, Bill Ardolino reported this months ago on his trip to Iraq.
searp
And the rest of the insurgency and other terrorist operations are funded by the money we give to Middle Eastern countries for oil.
We fund the terrorists, no way around that. We fund Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. Do you think for a second that the Iranians, Saudis, etc. would have the spare cash absent oil sales?
srv
We must destroy the insurgency so we can rebuild it.
I have a solution to the insurgency that will probably work faster than anything the nutters have come up with. Lets just repaint all those schools with lead paint.
TenguPhule
Can we take our ball back and go home now?
Pb
Hundreds of thousands sounds like a gross under-estimate, even for this.
Remember, we literally flew billions of dollars into Iraq and gave it to contractors in backpacks. We can’t account for tens of billions of dollars. And that’s just money–there’s also “Iraq’s Arms Bazaar“:
Funny story–George W. Bush purportedly invaded Iraq to disarm it, prevent it from arming others, and bring stability to the region. But, now that we’ve invaded and brought instability to the region, we’ve also brought with us more arms, and now Iraq is arming others with them.
Bubblegum Tate
Did anybody else see that amazing “America to the Rescue!” segment on The Daily Show last week? It was fan-fucking-tastic. A perfect summary of our long, shitty involvement in the ME, which basically amounts to picking a strongman du jour, backing him, then moving on to the next regime when the one we were backing became to big for its britches.
Pb
Bubblegum Tate,
Yes, that was awesome.
whippoorwill
Well of course the insurgents need to make a buck, What kind of war would it be if only one side has guns and bullets. Maybe next tax year we could have an insurgent deduction and we can all make a donation to spruce up Arlington National Cemetery.
The Other Andrew
Given that this administration values enterprising, unregulated capitalism more than democracy, I can see why they think Iraq is a success.
Bubblegum Tate
Pb–
That episode has attained the coveted “Keep Until I Delete” status on my TiVo because of how awesome that segment was/is.