U.S. officials defend Iraq against attack — from the GAO

[unhappycamper]

U.S. officials defend Iraq against attack — from the GAO
By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspaper
Posted on Tuesday, September 14, 2010

BAGHDAD — Iraq might be running a budget surplus but that doesn't mean it should spend it, U.S. officials said Tuesday, arguing that the Iraqi government's finances are too fragile for it to pay a greater share of its security costs.

The Obama administration's comments came in response to a new U.S. government study that found that Iraq had a surplus of $52.1 billion at the end of 2009, including $11.8 billion available to be spent.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, provided ammunition to lawmakers who've argued that the U.S. shouldn't run up its own budget deficit to bankroll the Pentagon's military training mission in Iraq. The study concluded, "Iraq has the potential to further contribute toward its security needs, even as it addresses other competing priorities."

The Obama administration, which has asked Congress to approve $2 billion for training and equipping Iraqi military and police in the 2011 fiscal year, said carrying out the GAO recommendation could put Iraq at financial risk and jeopardize U.S. interests in a country where it's spent, by the report's calculation, $642 billion in military operations since 2003.

U.S. officials in Iraq said that the country's budget — as much as 90 percent of which comes from oil revenues — remains vulnerable to oil price shocks and that its surplus is largely the result of the government being unable to spend as much as it had planned on reconstruction projects.