Why should Iraq have to pay us back?

[fujiyama]

I was reading another post where people were angry some democrats didn't go along with the idea that Iraq should have to pay back half the money back?

Why the hell should Iraq have to pay anything back? I was watching the same thing on Buchanan and Press and I honestly had to say Buchanan made a lot more sense. He said we went in and smashed up their country...And it's disgraceful to expect them to pay us back.

I understand the anger over Bush's request for 87 B dollars, especially as he has cut taxes for the rich, and funds for everything here in the US. Also, we know that much of this is corporate welfare and war profiteering (Haliburton's unbid contracts)...

I still don't understand what else should be done. I honestly believe that this country started this mess and we have to spend the money to clean it up (though the UN should be given most of the leadership role
)... Where the money is going should definetely be investigated (and I definetely don't trust the administration with it), but to claim that Russia, France, or Germany out to flip the bill for Iraq's reconuctruction is a nice way to weasel yourself out of the consequences of starting this idiotic war in the first place.

[bahrbearian]

1. Because Sadam started the War by breaking the U.N. Resolution.

Isn't it obvious Iraq is a better place without him?

[DisgustipatedinCA]

3. Um...I thought he was complying

That is, before we threw out the UN and began bombing the hell out of the entire country.

As to the original post, I'll be damned if I know. I think the US taxpayers should have to shoulder the entire burden, preferably under the auspices of the UN. I know I'm dreaming, but to require a real monetary bottom-line hit might cause people to think twice next time the cokehead wants to start a unilateral, pre-emptive war. It's unfortunate that the humanitarian angle doesn't work with most people, but that does seem to be the case.

[bahrbearian]

9. It was Sarcasm, We broke it , we get to fix it, or have too.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

16. Mea Culpa

I'm not quite calibrated this evening. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

[CarlBallard]

2. I agree

I think we should have made the administration pay for the increase with tax increases rather than loans to Iraq. Especially since the loans seem to be a way to get their oil money into our hands. Has the governing council even said they'd accept a loan? Until a democratically elected govenment is in place (and I still hold out hope) I dont' think they should be in a position to take on more debt, especially from the people who put them in office.

[AP]

4. Here are some reasons:

From http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=546553#546581 :

I think it would make sense that the US pay for the damage it caused, but when we go beyond that, to build infrastructure in Iraq, Iraq should invest in that themsleves and reap the full benefits of their investment.

I think the question though is more like, who's going to pay for the infranstructure investment which makes Bechtel and Haliburton rich.

Any money that's essentially an capital investment for their benefit should be a loan to them, paid back out of whatever profits they make. But the fucked up think about that is that they shouldn't be making a profit off Iraq. And the American taxpayer DEFINITELY shouldn't be making capital investments the benfits of which accure solely to Bechtel and Haliburton.
--
there is not a humanitarian bone in anyone in that administration. The reason they want it to be grants instead of loans is because it's easier to steal from the U.S. taxpayer than it is to finagle with the politics of stealing Iraqi $$.
--
With a loan, accounting will be a lot closer. The Junta just wants to steal this money. Let's stop giving money to the BFEE with the excuse that it is for humanitarian purposes. This filth has no humanity.

[Scaramouche]

5. I see 2 points to the loan idea...

First, there should not be a loan because of the following:

-It's a really bad precedent to invade a country then loan them to repair the damage.

-It doesn't help the country and is disastrous policy, i.e. think Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versille.

-Loan money to your friend and you lose both your money and your friend.

Second, this is a stick in the eye of the boy emperor and club to beat him with. Since he refused to split the request for aid off from the military funding request, Congreess will exercise the power of the purse.

He needs to respond to the request for a plan and a timetable. In the end he'll be taken down a peg or two and the Money will get to Iraq...

[AP]

11. The bad precedent is in the invasion part, not the loan part.

I believe Keynes thought that the problem with post WWI loans wasn't the loan part, but the fact that they were exhorbitant. He accurately predicted that Germany wouldn't be able to pay them back, that they'd destroy the economy, and that they'd cause bigger political problems.

Could be wrong.

Does anyone have any idea what these loans are for, exactly? I think the problem for Republicans is that they cut into the pillaging private corporations wanted to do in Iraq. Anything that goes back into the US treasury, comes out of Bechtel's profit margin.

Aslo, Bush's reason for being is to take money out of the treasury, and not to put money back.

[Scaramouche]

15. You are Right about the Bad precedent

I was being tongue in cheek though. I think it goes against international law to charge the country for war damage caused by the occupier...

[DuctapeFatwa]

6. Because rich men want more money

As you grow in years, wisdom and understanding, you will find that this is the answer to most questions that begin with "why"

[maggrwaggr]

7. tell me why Iraq's oil money shouldn't be used to pay us back

The big answer to YOUR question is this:

We were promised that Iraq's oil money would pay for the reconstruction of the country.

I suppose some people don't give a shit about broken promises, seeing as how promises don't mean JACK anymore.

And everybody has such a short memory. Can anyone remember pre-Kobe? pre-Pope? Laci Peterson is now ancient history I suppose.

[Tinoire]

10. So the Iraqi people should have to pay Americans because Americans

have a President who made an obscene promise?


Am I getting this straight? Please tell me I've misunderstood.

[maggrwaggr]

23. what makes you think the Iraqi "people" will ever see a dime?

Don't be naive.

Think of the rich Saudis, the rich UAE folks, those kinds of people are the kinds of people we're talking about here.

We're helping them get their little "oil stand in the desert" up and running so they can become richer than gods.

Why shouldn't those chosen few pay us back?

It's not like they're NOT gonna have the money pretty soon.

[leesa]

17. Ummm...we are STEALING their oil. Iraq did nothing to us.

You don't really believe there is any justification for Iraq having to pay us after we illegally invaded a defenseless country who had complied with the requirements of the UN resolution, do you??

Broken promise?? what are you talking about? It was never theirs to promise.

[Scaramouche]

19. I must've forget agout that promise..,

To much court TV... Oh, wait, was that Wolfiewizz who made that promise or the Chandlabra guy who wanted to the leader in Iraq?

By the way have the Iraqis asked for the loan???

[Peachhead22]

8. Because...

Much of what we're rebuilding we didn't break. The schools, medical facilities, and infrastructure was a mess before even a shot was fired. Saddam neglected the country. We did our part. We got rid of Saddam. Iraqi's should be grateful for that. Plus, they're sitting on the second largest oil reserves in the world. Why shouldn't they have to pay to make improvements to their own country? When their own countymen did the vast majority of the damage?

The stuff we blew up we should absolutely replace. Free of charge. And a state of the art replacement would be appropriate IMO. But we didn't do $100-plus billion in damage to the country. That's what shock and awe and all the precision weapons was all about. Get the critical target and leave the surroundings intact.

Secondly, it's a direct subsidy for Haliburton, KBR and several other companies that have inappropriatly cozy relationships with the current administration. They were given no-bid contracts, without oversight, and they are engaging in war profiteering IMO.

[incapsulated]

12. "Iraqi's should be grateful"?

Gee, I don't remember the part where they begged us to bomb their country to shit and impose draconian sanctions, then do it again and invade, turn Iraq into a roach motel for terrorists all over the mideast who continually blow-up their oil pipelines so the country can't begin to get any revenue, throw thousands of their people in detention camps, create a horrible crimewave that we can't begin to control...

Maybe you can provide a link?

[Tinoire]

13. This is TOO much!

Much of what we're rebuilding we didn't break.:mad: The schools, medical facilities, and infrastructure was a mess before even a shot was fired. :mad: Saddam neglected the country. :mad:


I suppose George Bush's first war and then 8 years of sanctions and incessant bombings under the Clinton (and Bush II) administration had NOTHING to do with that?

Iraqi's should be grateful for that :mad: :mad: :mad:

shock and awe and all the precision weapons !!!!!!!!!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Oh boy. Have you given this war much thought? Why we're there? How we got there? What we've been doing there for the last few decades?

[Peachhead22]

20. try some decaf coffee

"I suppose George Bush's first war and then 8 years of sanctions and incessant bombings under the Clinton (and Bush II) administration had NOTHING to do with that?"



Iraq had enough money coming in for Saddam to build and maintain dozens of incredible palaces. Yet the infrastructure was falling apart. Is Saddam's misappropriation of funds the American taxpayers fault (or responsibility)?

"Oh boy. Have you given this war much thought? Why we're there? How we got there? What we've been doing there for the last few decades?

Why we're there? Because corrupt Iraqi exiles (Chalabi, etc.) got together with the corrupt Bush administration and destroyed a country so the corrupt Iraqi exiles could be installed in power, and the administration's corrupt business partners could charge top dollar rebuilding the damage...and a whole lot more. Yet still leave all the oil profits for the administration's corrupt oil buddies.

How we got there? The aforementioned parties falsified evidence to give them the pretext.

Why do you want them to get away with it?

[quaker bill]

14. Wrong

12 years of economic sanctions combined with the 1991 war destroyed the infrastructure. The sanctions were reportedly also the cause of 1/2 million starvation deaths.

Weekly or more frequent bombing runs for 12 years.

We consistently stood in the way of any attempt to get the sanctions lifted. Saddam on the other hand apparently, based on our actual findings, gave up WMD programs very early on.

Saddam kept saying, I am done with WMD's, lift the sanctions. We said no.

We have pursued an unjust and destructive foriegn policy in regard to Iraq for the better part of 20 years, perhaps longer. Remember, we put them into the WMD business in the first place. That was Rummy and Ronbo Raygun's doing.

The least we should do is pay reparations. We should also, as an act of true contrition, impeach, convict, and remove from office this entire administration. Let's head right on down the order of succession until we get to Dennis Kucinich, or someone else in line who opposed this mess.

I have a concern as well for the no-bid contracting to repug contributors. Let's hire Iraqi's to do the work.

[leesa]

18. You must be out of your mind! The Iraqis NEVER asked us to get rid of

Saddam. The only thing they asked for was to end the sanctions, whioch the US refused to do because they planned to invade and steal the oil all along.

You have been lied to.

There are no such thing as precision weapons. Are you truly foolish enough to believe that whopper?? You saw and heard what those "precision weapons" do. Do you really think that in the resulting fireballs nothing was damaged and no one was killed??? You have been thoroughly conned by these murderers.

They should be grateful that we murdered over 12000+ citizens and destroyed their country's infrastructure????

You are an idiot! Don't you know the sanctions are what caused the decay in a once vibrant society?

[Peachhead22]

21. leesa

"There are no such thing as precision weapons. Are you truly foolish enough to believe that whopper?? You saw and heard what those "precision weapons" do. Do you really think that in the resulting fireballs nothing was damaged and no one was killed??? You have been thoroughly conned by these murderers.

Have you ever seen news archive footage of Dresden, Germany after the firebombing in WWII? Or Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? Or even Hue during the Vietnam war? Have you seen the live nightime footage of Baghdad during this last war with individual buildings blowing up? Notice a difference?

And where did I say "nothing was damaged and no one was killed"? I clearly said we should pay for what we destroyed. But the administration wants us to pay for state of the art prisons, schools and hospitals in Iraq. Things that we didn't destroy. Many of which didn't exist in the first place. The administration wants us to pay for things like a zip code system for Iraq. Did we bomb the zip code away from them? <rhetorical question> The administration wants us to pay to replace all of Baghdad's garbage trucks with top of the line new ones. Did we destroy every one of Baghdad's garbage trucks? What would be the military value for that? I'm sure there's plenty of other examples too.

Is it because the Bushies are nice guys? If they were they wouldn't have lied to us in the run up to this war. No, it's a disquised subsidy for the adminstration's business partners and it's coming out of our pockets. If some of it comes from the Iraqi's pockets, I hope in some cases they'll say "No, since we're paying for it, we don't want you to build us that overpriced building" Or at least say "We'll choose the contractor to build that nice new building."

My objection isn't to money for Iraq, it's to the massive amount of pork barrel spending and graft in Iraq.

[Scaramouche]

24. Dear Peachhead, Loan or no loan? To go back to the original question...

I'm with the idea that we let our Government do this and we all should pay the price for this mistake crowd. (Crowd of one, methinks) I find it ironical that many Americans thought that the folks in Afghanistan and Iraqi should overthrow their governments for being the bad guys...When they didn't- then there should regime change brought on by us, US.

I'm not saying that was the feeling here at DU but I wonder if some day there will be others counties who say the samething about us???

[dpibel]

25. What the US Broke

You are aware, aren't you, that infrastructure was a major target in the first war on Iraq? You have not, I trust, overlooked the fact that the US blocked most requests for materiel to rebuild infrastructure, claiming that most everything was dual use?

Did you know that the much-vaunted oil-for-food program was wholly administered by the UN, and that the money went into a UN account, and didn't pass through the sticky hands of Saddam Hussein? Do you know how paltry that money was? It's been some months since I looked up the oil-for-food website, which is buried somewhere in the UN website, and I didn't save the link, so I can't send you to it, but my recollection is that the number of dollars involved was substantially less than $1000 per year per Iraqi.

I suppose it's possible that SH built great palaces. If he did, he did it with black market oil sales, which makes a person wonder who he was dealing with, and just who winked and who nudged.

Thing is, before George Daddy's dandy little fireworks display, Iraq had a functioning infrastructure. Afterwards, it didn't. And the money that flowed like great rivers into that country between the Bushes was barely enough to feed the humans, let alone rebuild infrastructure.

Just out of curiosity, since I see this quite a bit: You seem to accept as a given that Little Bush and his people are somewhat truth-impaired. In light of that, how is it that you believe without question the story of the great palaces, and all the infrastructure that could have been built with the palace money? Everything else the regime has said about Iraq has been a lie. Why believe that one?

[dweller]

22. B'cuz

they tride to kill his deddy.
nuff sed.

(/freep off)

dp