Diana West

GAO: Iraq Is Rolling in Dough

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:05:19 GMT

GAO REPORT BOLSTERS CASE FOR PUSHING IRAQ TO PAY MORE RECONSTRUTION COSTS

Congressional demands that Iraq increasingly fund its own reconstruction will be a prime focus of the upcoming defense authorization debate next month, bolstered by new financial estimates provided by the Government Accountability Office.

No comment as yet from our old pal Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, the body that oversees Iraqi government spending. He's the one who, back in May, in reaction to the very thought of oil-soaked Iraq paying its own way to reconstruction, hit the roof, telling the Chicago Tribune that, au contraire, "America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq." And furthermore: "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." As for the idea of filling up US humvees in Iraq on the cheap (if not for free), Sunni lawmaker Dhafer al-Ani said: "It's illogical, illegal and immoral. Any additional commitments by the Iraqis to the Americans will make it less respected in the eyes of the Iraqi people, and that will make things even more complicated."

But I digress. Back to today's update on Iraqi oil wealth:

The report, released Tuesday, found that Iraq is capable of shouldering more of its own domestic obligations.

“Iraq’s large oil reserves coupled with surging oil prices offer the government of Iraq the potential to contribute to the country’s reconstruction efforts and thereby enhance essential services to the Iraqi people,” the report said.

Imagine that.

According to the GAO, the Iraqi government took in $96 billion in revenue between 2005 and 2007, 94 percent of which came from oil sales. In 2008, Iraq could earn as much as $86.2 billion, assuming oil prices of about $125 per barrel and export near 2 million barrels per day.

Furthermore, the GAO found that in 2007, the Iraqi government spent only 65 percent of its total budget allocation and 28 percent of its $12.2 billion investment budget. Only about 1 percent of Iraqi expenditures last year went toward maintaining projects initiated jointly by the U.S. and Iraqi governments, the report stated.

Iraq also holds $29.4 billion in a development fund.

In contrast, Congress has appropriated $48 billion for Iraqi reconstruction since 2003, the report said.

That's your $48 billion, by the way.

“The Iraqi government now has tens of billions of dollars at its disposal to fund large scale reconstruction projects. It is inexcusable for U.S. taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves,” said Carl Levin , D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Levin and John W. Warner of Virginia, a senior Republican on the panel, said the time has come for Iraq to bear more of the burden. The Senate version of the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill (S 3001), which they sponsored, contains several provisions aimed at prodding the Iraqis to assume more financial responsibility. The panel approved the bill April 30.

Specifically, the legislation would bar Pentagon spending on reconstruction projects costing more than $2 million and would require the United States to work toward Iraqi funding of smaller-scale projects as well.

The measure would allow the United States, for now, to continue spending on combined U.S. and Iraqi military operations and to build up Iraqi military forces. But the language would set in motion a process that would result in Iraqis increasingly paying for those accounts.

Under the bill, the U.S. government would be required to “take action to ensure that Iraqi funds are used” to pay the salaries of Iraqi security forces, as well as the cost of training, equipping and sustaining them.

The committee’s bill also calls for negotiations with the Iraqis on an agreement to share costs for combined military operations.

These provisions enjoy widespread support among members of both parties.

“Despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue in the past five years, U.S. taxpayer money has been the overwhelming source of Iraq reconstruction funds,” Warner said. “It is time for the sovereign government of Iraq, using its revenues, expenditures and surpluses, to fully assume the responsibility to provide essential services and improve the quality of life for the Iraqi people.”

Sens. Ben Nelson , D-Neb., and Susan Collins , R-Maine, want to expand that language to shift all U.S. funding for reconstruction, fuel, and the training of Iraqi security forces into loans instead of grants. They hope to be able to offer an amendment to that effect when the bill reaches the Senate floor in early September.

Why do I doubt we would ever collect on such "loans"? Just get the Iraqis to pay as they go, now.

Levin and Warner are also involved in placing more scrutiny on money delivered through the Commanders Emergency Response Program, an account meant for military personnel on the ground to respond to smaller scale emergencies on an ad-hoc basis.

They wrote Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 1 to complain that $33 million of the program’s funds were obligated to construct a business zone near the Baghdad airport that would include hotels, shops, and an office tower.

“It is difficult to understand why U.S. taxpayer funds should be used to pay for this major infrastructure project in Iraq which will be owned by the Iraqi government,” the senators wrote.

Um, yeah.

The House version of the defense authorization bill (HR 5658) also contains language seeking to curb the perceived abuse of the emergency program’s funding and push the Iraqi government to bear a greater share of rebuilding costs. The legislation would require the Pentagon to report on how the program’s expenditures are calculated and would require the Iraqi government to bear a greater burden of rebuilding costs. The legislation also would authorize only half of President Bush’s $2 billion request for training Iraqi forces.

Members outside the defense committees also reacted strongly to the GAO report.

“This report is going to make a lot of American families very angry,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman , D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “The record gas prices they are paying have turned into an economic windfall for Iraq. But the Iraqi government isn’t spending the money on rebuilding. American taxpayers are paying that bill too.”

Several lawmakers referenced the now infamous prediction of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz , who promised in 2003 testimony before the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee that the United States would not have to foot the bill for rebuilding Iraq.

“The oil revenues of that county could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years,” Wolfowitz said. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.”

Famous last words...but let's finally make them come true, eh citizens (including presidential candidates)?

Daddy, What's a Draft Card?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:32:21 GMT

Forty-one years after the debut of "Hair," New York's Public Theater has revived--resucitated?--the hippie rock-sical that, as the New York Times reliably put it, "became the soundtrack of a generation enraged by the war in Vietnam...."

Was it really just the war in Vietnam that they were enraged by? Or was there also something else a little closer to the bone? If we look back at the antiwar protestors-- "the moral conscience of our society," according to one (self)-satisfied, 65-year-old theater-goer who first saw "Hair" as a Berkeley grad student--there is a terrible coincidence the morality-mythology never admits: the fact that "the movement" dwindled before the Vietnam war ended, but shortly after the Nixon administration made its intentions known to "Vietnamize" the war and end the draft.

From The Death of the Grown-Up, p. 49:

The synchronicity, post-1970, between a fizzling-out protest movement and a winding-down draft--even as the most intensive bombing campaigns of the war raged on--cannot be explained away as unrelated coincidence. In other words, it’s tough to dismiss the fact that interest in the war as a political movement waned as self-interest in the draft became a non-issue. Concern about Southeast Asian “victims” of American imperialism vanished as those same Southeast Asians became targets of North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge aggression. This reality ultimately struck David Horowitz, a famed thinker of “second thoughts” about both the antiwar movement and his own antiwar activism as editor of the New Left magazine “Ramparts.” Comparing two Washington antiwar protests that fell to either side of President Nixon’s decision to “Vietnamize” the conflict and end the draft--one in June, 1970, that drew close to one million people, the other on May Day, 1971, which only 30,000 attended--Horowitz realized “the rationale for most people to protest was gone.” He continued: “When this fact registered on me, the effect was devastating. The driving force behind the massive anti-war movement on America’s campuses had been the desire to avoid military service.”

In Radical Son, p. 195, Horowitz continues:

Because of my early fatherhood, I had never been draft elible, so had failed to realize how paramount a factor this prospect had been in motivating college students against the war. Other considerations may have swayed their opinions, but only this seemed to have prompted their actions.

I was struck anew by this snatch of history on reading in the Times account that the show's artistic director Oskar Eustis emerge from from deep 1960s-mode to explain to his 21st-century audience what draft cards even were.

Barefoot, his own mane of dark hair matted down by the heat, Mr. Eustis introduced the performance, saying, "We're still fighting an unpopular war abroad," adding his own editorial note that "we're responsible for it, and if we want to stop it, it's our job." His statement received enthusiastic applause.

Mr. Eustis, 50, also took a moment to explain to "people younger than I" that the scraps of paper being burned at the end of Act I are draft cards....

Now, if he could just get around to explaining the rest of it--you know: "Let the sun shine in...."

The "Club Model" of Terrorism

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:05:53 GMT

What ho, Jeeves--Al Qaeda is just like the Drones Club!

So say, in effect, a pair of academics the Washington Post saw fit to showcase in today's paper. It seems that there these two Poindexters have been pondering the big bad world from their particularly picturesqe ivory towers (Stanford and UC Santa Barbara, respectively) and An Idea has come to them (uh oh):

The generic problem is the question of why people having useful knowledge can't be bribed to reveal it," said David Laitin, a political scientist at Stanford University who has studied why terrorist groups that specialize in suicide attacks are so rarely undermined by defectors and turncoats.

Along with Eli Berman, a political scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Laitin has developed a theory to explain why the Hamdans of the world [i.e., the bin Laden drivers of the world] tend to stay loyal to the bin Ladens.

Hmmm. Does Islam or Allah or 72 virgins or "slay the infidel" have ANYTHING to do with it? Nope. Doesn't even rate a mention in Academy-land. Instead:

Laitin and Berman argue that it is because a group such as al-Qaeda is really an exclusive club.

Most people think of clubs as recreational groups, but Laitin and Berman are using a more subtle definition. Clubs are groups that tend to be selective about their members. Unlike political parties and book-reading groups, which allow anyone to join, clubs make it difficult for people to sign up. And once admitted, members must make personal sacrifices to stay. In the case of an exclusive golf club, the sacrifice might involve paying sizable dues. In the case of some religious orders, would-be members might have to go through lengthy periods of initiation.

Golf; dues; initiation--what else but Al Qaeda Golf and Tennis!

The "club model" of terrorism explains why cogs such as Hamdan stay loyal. Across all kinds of clubs, when members make sacrifices, they are much more likely to become intensely loyal to fellow members. Berman and Laitin think this is because the sacrifices that members make to join a club reduce their value outside the club. If you devote years to learning a religious text that knowledge can give you social cachet within your club, but your effort counts for little outside the club.

So "sacrifices" make "club" members loyal to each other. But "sacrifices"--such as "learning a religious text" (any religious text)--also devalue "club" members outside the club. Our geniuses expound:

"If you have to spend your life reading the Talmud, you are not very good at software," Laitin said.

Well, that's a little presumptuous, I'd say--but why is his example the Talmud in the first place when "club" members in question study...the Koran?

"The sacrifices get you social welfare, but if you took a bribe, your value outside of that club would be minuscule."

Whereas software engineers who "defect" from one company to another carry their value with them -- the skills are transferable -- al-Qaeda foot soldiers might enjoy high regard within that club but be worthless outside it. This may help explain why religious cults and organized-crime syndicates reward members for acquiring arcane cultural, scriptural and linguistic skills -- these are skills that cannot be easily transferred to the outside world.

In a detailed analysis of terrorist attacks in Israel, Laitin and Berman showed that the degree of "clubbiness" of terrorist groups predicted how violent they would be, especially when it came to suicide attacks: Elite organizations demanded greater sacrifices and elicited greater loyalty, and it was these groups that could plan and carry out the most lethal attacks with little fear of betrayal.

Islamic fanaticism, anyone? Nah.

The political scientists are not suggesting for a second that clubs are inherently violent -- most, in fact, are harmless.

Phew, thank goodness and isn't it marvelous having an advanced degree?

But what Laitin and Berman are suggesting is that clubs offer the kind of organizational structure that happens to provide the secrecy and loyalty needed to run a terrorist group.

What does this research mean for counterinsurgency efforts and fighting terrorism? Laitin argued that nations that compete with terrorist organizations to provide social benefits make it less likely that their citizens will be willing to make great sacrifices to join clubs that seek to destroy them.

So...if you can't beat them, "club" them--with "social benefits."

Of course, didn't our geniuses began this exercise pondering the non-bribeabilty of "terrorists"?

Tip to profs: Next time take a look at secret handshakes--and "club" literature.

Integrate into What?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:43:48 GMT

Today's column is on British reaction to best and brightest Muslim attitudes toward killing in the name of religion, sharia, the caliphate and more.

Meanwhile, over in Germany...

Hamas Christian Convert: "Send Regards to Israel"

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:01:10 GMT

Haaretz today reports on Joseph Yousef, who is, amazingly enough, the Christian convert son of a popular Hamas leader. He now lives in exile in California.

"Send regards to Israel, I miss it. I respect Israel and admire it as a country," he says.

"You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas. Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death."

Is that the justification for the suicide attacks?

"More than that. An entire society sanctifies death and the suicide terrorists. In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheikhs tell their students about the 'heroism of the shaheeds.'"

Good thing the Israeli security cabinet met this week for the first time to discuss global jihad.

Where Have the Israelis Been?

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:25:28 GMT

Jonathan Spyer reports (via Andrew Bostom):

On Wednesday, the Israeli security cabinet held its first discussion ever on the issue of the global jihad.

Blink. Blink....

Given theat Israel stands on the front line of global jihad, I guess it's--understatement of the milennium--about time.

Spyer writes:

One may assume that this discussion was not held purely for the general education of cabinet members. Salafi-Jihadism, with its hard-to-trace links between idea and deed, its loose frameworks of organization, and its utterly uncompromising ambitions, has arrived among us.

Let's hope Better Late Than Never is still operational.

Winning Poll Numbers

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:18:27 GMT

Between Obama's Ego Explosion and Americans Wanting to Drill--69 percent!--John McCain suddenly looks more like a winner (despite himself).

The Ego that Ate the Candidate

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:43:31 GMT

The Washington Post reports: In his closed door meeting with House Democrats this evening, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama... concluded, "this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for."

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives.

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said.

Air sickness bag, anyone?

Is this the end of Obama? I'm serious. An ego this OUT OF CONTROL just isn't electable.

Did You Know...

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:05:16 GMT

...the top ten "public intellectuals" in the world are Muslims?

That's what Foreign Policy magazine determined, having turned its decision over to an Internet poll in which over 500,000 voters participated in just four weeks.

FP explains:

For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere.

No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.

Ya think?

Spencer Shows How It's Done

rbuscher@haleymiranda.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:36:36 GMT

All in a day's work: The indefatigable Robert Spencer, far from shrinking from, or even just ignoring the personal attack--"Spencer hates Muslims"--transforms it into an inspirational object lesson on distractingly deceptive smear tactics.

From the ultimate point of Spencer's post:

3. In saying "Spencer hates Muslims," [Grover] Norquist does what he has done for years. [Frank] Gaffney says in his article that Norquist "made repeated ad hominem attacks on Fox TV and elsewhere against me and anyone else (including noted experts like Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson) who dared to warn about the dangers of Islamism. More often than not, he portrayed such warnings as bigoted, racist denunciations of all Muslims."

The bottom line on that, however, is that even if Pipes and Emerson and Gaffney and I really did hate Muslims, that wouldn't establish a thing about the Islamic supremacist agenda, or about how Grover Norquist has helped to push that agenda forward. If we really did hate Muslims, would that mean that Grover Norquist has not enabled Islamic supremacists to gain access to the highest levels of the U.S. government? As common as this "hate" charge is, it is just a red herring, a diversion from the genuine issues.

And it is, of course, an effective diversion on many levels. It moves the onus from Norquist and the Islamic supremacists to those who are resisting them. It changes the categories, so that Muslims become the victims of "hate" -- the cardinal sin in today's multiculturalist fog -- instead of perpetrators of Islamic supremacist oppression. It lines up anti-jihadists for vilification and marginalization as bigots and for possible prosecution under hate speech laws, if Islamic supremacists can succed in ramming those through.

And it isn't even true. I don't hate Muslims. In fact, I like Muslims so much that I don't want them to fall victim to the stonings and amputations and denial of the freedom of conscience mandated by Islamic law. As I said here, "I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc." Is all that "anti-Muslim"? The Muslim correspondent to whom I first wrote that thought so. He responded: "So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims."

So would Grover Norquist rather see women beaten (per Qur'an 4:34) and stoned for adultery, and those who leave Islam hunted down and killed? For my protesting against these things is what makes him say that I "hate Muslims."

This demonstrates the superficiality of Norquist's analysis as well as a propagandist's unwillingness to debate honestly and tendency to demonize his opponents. It shows what he is really standing for, and whom he is standing with.

Nevertheless, my invitation to debate him is still open.