"Winning Iraqi hearts and minds with money; Modest program to put cash in hands stretches mandate with big projects" by Dana Hedgpeth and Sarah Cohen Washington Post Aug. 11, 2008
WASHINGTON - In the five-year struggle to finish the war in Iraq, military leaders and their troops have said a particular weapon is among the most effective in their arsenal:
American cash.
Soldiers walk the streets carrying thousands of dollars to pay Iraqis for doorways battered in American raids and limbs lost during firefights. Sheiks appeal to commanders to use larger pools of money locked away in Humvees and safes at military bases for new schools, health clinics, water treatment plants and generators, knowing that the military can bypass Iraqi and U.S. bureaucratic hurdles.
While our vets and the people back home are shat on!!!!!
Oh, by the way, Iraq's government has surplus revenues, too!!
How you feeling with that snout buried in a bowl of shit, 'murka?
Army documents show that $48,000 was spent on 6,000 pairs of children's shoes; an additional $50,000 bought 625 sheep for people described in records as "starving poor locals" in a Baghdad neighborhood. Soldiers ordered $100,000 worth of dolls and $500,000 in action figures made to look like Iraqi Security Forces. About $14,250 was spent on "I Love Iraq" T-shirts. More than $75,000 sent a delegation to a women's and civil rights conference in Cairo. And $12,800 was spent for two pools to cool bears and tigers at Zawra Park Zoo in Baghdad.
The money comes from the Commander's Emergency Response Program, which has so far spent at least $2.8 billion in U.S. funds. It is not tied to international standards of redevelopment or normal government purchasing rules. Instead, it is governed by broad guidelines packaged into a field manual called "Money as a Weapon System."
The program is intended for short-term, small-scale "urgent humanitarian relief and reconstruction." But as the broader $50 billion effort to rebuild Iraq with big infrastructure projects runs dry, CERP is by default taking on more importance as a reconstruction program.
Maj. Dana Hyatt, a fifth-grade social studies teacher in Connecticut who served in Haditha two years ago as a Marine reservist, said he was permitted to pay $500 for the loss of a leg or an arm. He paid up to $2,500 for a death -- a value that was written in the regulations.
That's all an Iraqis leg or arm is worth? $500?
And an Iraqi life is ONLY $2, 500?!
That MUST be WRONG; to me, they are PRICELESS -- as is ALL LIFE!!!!!!!
Wanna read way more about war looting?
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