Reuters here:
World donors must provide money as well as debt relief to Iraq whose massive reconstruction needs dwarf its potential income from the world's second largest oil reserves, a senior U.S. Treasury official said on Saturday.
John Taylor, Treasury undersecretary for International Affairs, told Reuters in an interview that the United States and Britain -- now occupying Iraq -- were using Iraqi assets frozen in the United State during the reign of Saddam Hussein and some funds from U.N.-supervised oil sales.
But more would be needed even as crude exports restart, he said on the sidelines of a Davos, Switzerland-based World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.
"With respect to the amount of resources that are going to be coming in through oil you compare that with the needs, there is going to be a need for donor support," Taylor said.
"There is not going to be enough (oil revenues) to do the reconstruction that is why this donor activity that is under way is so important."
Washington has said that its own allocation of $2.4 billion for Iraqi reconstruction over the next two years was the highest amount of aid budgeted since the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction after World War II.
So, uh, maybe 41-style diplomacy and figuring out how to work with NGOs would have been useful? Unless aWol and his gang just plan to hold a gun to the donor's heads, of course.
Then again, the beauty part is that since money is fungible, the "donors" will really be paying for the mercenaries we are paying to handle the occupation chores for us! Kind of "we broke it, you bought it," eh?
Anyhow, for the sake of the Iraqis, and our soldiers, let's hope the aWol doesn't "forget" about the $2.4 billion the way he did the money for Afghanistan. Not that $2.4 billion will anything more than a down payment, of course.