Last summer, before the Congress passed, the $87 billion Iraq/Afghanistan appropriations bill, Paul Bremer at least once had to make a trip back to Washington to practically beg for more dollars; the reconstruction effort was broke and just couldn't do anything until the appropriation was passed.
Now, we all know already that Mr. Bush has, in a deliberate election year ploy to make his budget look smaller, left the money needed for Iraq and Afghanistan out of his budget, so that he can at least make the deficit look smaller. We also knew that Bush was going to put off asking for the appropriation until after the election, hoping that the American people would be gullible enough to not pay attention to the additional money we'll need to spend there this year.
What we didn't know was just how much Mr. Bush was willing to risk in order to try to save his political hide.
Originally, I thought that they'd managed to time the $87 billion appropriation so that the money in that bill wouldn't run out until after this year's election.
I was wrong. The numbers came out yesterday...and guess what? The money for Iraq is actually going to run out in September of this year. In other words, after September, the Pentagon will have no money budgeted to pay our troops there, they'll have no money for the additional supplies/fuel/food/armor/medical care that our troops need, and maybe most importantly, there will be no money available for any additional reconstruction work from the time that this money runs out until the Bush Admin. is willing to push for new funding.
Now, this article makes the point that the DOD can shift some money around, but their first priority is obviously going to be paying for our troops there (Can't let the army go unpaid, that'd just be evil), but when a money crunch hits, guess which things are going to get delayed first? That's right, the reconstruction projects!! In other words, just like Mr. Bremer had to put some reconstruction efforts on hold when the first appropriation ran out last summer, he'll have to do exactly the same thing this year.
And in fact, this money will be running out barely a month or two after we've handed over control to the Iraqis, assuming that the desperate election year handover goes as planned. So what we'll basically be looking at is founding a new government in a country that's only partially rebuilt, and then almost right away cutting off that government's source of funds for reconstruction projects for a period of several months. Do you think that's a good way to inspire good will among the Iraqis for their new government?
This is an almost certain way to cause greater instability in Iraq. One of the things feeding the insurgency there has been the poor/slow reconstruction efforts, the failure to get the power on, etc. I'd be pretty unhappy too if I had 8 hours of electricity a day.
So basically, what we have here is a very solid case of the Bush Administration putting election year politics ahead of both the safety of our soldiers and the goal of stability in Iraq. They're willing to delay the reconstruction and funding for said reconstruction solely because they don't want to look bad before the election. This is absolutely shameful.
I'd say that a sound policy would be to push for additional funding near the time that the last appropriation runs out, but who am I kidding, they won't even consider doing that unless this turns into a major scandal. They probably won't even let Bremer complain this time. So, I won't even bother advocating a more sound policy position, because it's not like it would matter at all to these people.
If you have a minute, please visit my web page, thanks!