Need ammo to combat freepers as to who REALLY was against the 87 billion?

[noahmijo]

HERE IT IS:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration threatened for the first time Tuesday to veto an $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan if Congress converts any Iraqi rebuilding money into loans.

White House officials issued the warning even though many lawmakers agree that the bill's final version is likely to bow to President Bush and omit any loans. By underscoring Bush's opposition to loans, the administration threat could make it easier for congressional Republican leaders to nail down enough votes to help the president prevail.


The House bill included $18.6 billion to help Iraq rebuild its water supplies, health clinics and Army, and made the money a grant that country would not have to repay.


The Senate included $18.4 billion but would require Iraq to repay about half -- unless Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries forgave 90 percent of the debt Baghdad ran up under Saddam Hussein's regime.


Bush and a host of administration officials had repeatedly expressed their opposition to loans in recent weeks, but had not issued a veto threat before. A letter written Tuesday reiterated White House arguments, but contained the first such veto warning.


"If this provision is not removed, the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," wrote White House budget director Joshua Bolten.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/21/sprj.irq.congress.iraq.ap/

[rumguy]

1. absolute hypocrisy

and they need to be called on it

[Killarney]

2. I fucking hate the media so much for

repeating the whole Kerry voted against the troops crap without saying this part, too.

[bossfish]

3. Good find, and...

...throw in that the latest audit shows the CPA can't account for almost $9 billion...

It is so nice now the "adults" are running things.

[mojowork_n]

4. The title of this is...

"One of the Biggest Heists in History"

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=77&rnd=106.17153817391067

Approximately 8.8 billion dollars is sort of unaccounted-for, of the re-development money allocated for Iraq. The Right is always critical of the abuses perpetrated on oil-for-food UN funds, Saddam having sliced himself and his cronies a cool ten percent every time transactions were made, but it looks like Paul Bremer and his boys may have been playing by the same rules, with the funds that were at their disposal.

Also, in the Washington Post,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37822-2004Aug3?language=printer

Another 2 billion or so of Iraqi money (interestingly enough, also from the proceeds of sales of Iraqi oil, pumped since the U.S. came in) has been going straight to Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown & Root, as well as other companies, with a very scattered and opaque paper trail of documentation showing where and how actual money was spent.... Iraqis themselves were very critical of some of the expenditures, and the fact that few if any Iraqi's had any input at all into where the money went... The fact that Kellog, Brown and Root used some of the Iraqi oil money to buy gasoline from Kuwait, that they re-sold to the U.S. at highly inflated prices, was not looked upon very favorably.

[Guaranteed]

5. That's right....there's our counterpunch

I posted about this on Sunday, got two responses.

Anyway, yeah, Bush wanted the money to be a gift so that Iraq could sell his buddies cheaper oil.