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Washington Post - May 2, 2008
Senate panel moves to shift costs of war to Iraq
By Jonathan Weisman
With energy prices soaring and the federal deficit approaching $400 billion, senators from both parties moved yesterday to force Iraq to shoulder more financial responsibility for its reconstruction and self-defense.
On a unanimous vote taken late Wednesday night and announced yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved legislation that would prohibit the Defense Department from funding any reconstruction or infrastructure program that costs more than $2 million.
Under the plan, Iraq also would have to pay to train and equip its security forces and provide the salaries of Sunni-dominated "Sons of Iraq" security groups. In addition, the administration would have to negotiate cost-sharing agreements for U.S.-Iraqi joint military operations, with an eye toward Iraq picking up the tab for items such as fuel.
Senators said they would move later this month to expand those provisions and bar any federal agency -- including the State Department -- from financing large-scale Iraqi rebuilding projects.
"The American taxpayers are paying for too many things . . . that the Iraqis ought to pay for out of their surplus," said Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). "They export 2 million barrels of oil a day. That oil brings in about $120 a barrel. It is unconscionable, it is inexcusable, it makes no common sense for a country that has that kind of wealth and that kind of surplus in our banks and their banks to be sending us the tab."
Senators from both parties said the effort would save taxpayers billions of dollars over time and they hailed the committee's vote as the initial step in what may become Congress's first successful effort to force a change in White House war policy.
The U.S. military currently pays about $300 a month to each of the 90,000 Sons of Iraq security personnel, but officials say they hope the Iraqi government will take over the contracts by the end of the year. The original plan was for the overwhelmingly Sunni Sons of Iraq to be incorporated into the Iraqi Security Forces, but the Shiite-majority government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has resisted hiring them.
More recently, the U.S. command has said that only about 20,000 should be added to the security forces -- nearly all of them in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.
Congress's actions reflect the convergence of soaring gasoline prices, an ailing economy, rising political pressure and weariness of a war that took the lives of 48 more U.S. troops last month. Democrats on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress chided Bush on the fifth anniversary of his speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in which he declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
"Five years after George Bush declared 'mission accomplished' and John McCain told the American people that 'the end is very much in sight' in Iraq, we have lost thousands of lives, spent half a trillion dollars, and we're no safer," said Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.)…….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050102224.html?nav=rss_world
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