Iraq Oil Pipeline Blasts Squander Revenue

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/iraq_lost_oil


<snip>


But some 250 guerrilla attacks have blown apart pipelines and other oil infrastructure, squandering between $7 billion and $12 billion in potential export revenue. Experts say the losses, as much as $490 for each of the 26 million Iraqis, have hamstrung Iraq's development.


<snip>
More than $1 billion in Iraqi oil revenues also flowed to U.S. and British firms, who landed expensive contracts from the now defunct U.S.-led occupation authority, often without competitive bidding.


Halliburton Co., the oil services company that Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) once ran, landed 60 percent of the large contracts financed by Iraqi oil funds, audits show.


But Iraq's losses don't just affect Iraqis. They also mean U.S. taxpayers must pay a larger share of the reconstruction, starting with the massive $18.4 billion approved by Congress last year. The American outlay, only $1 billion of which has been spent, comes despite pre-invasion predictions of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who said Iraqi oil could generate $50 billion to $100 billion over two or three years.



Flames and smoke gush from burning oil at a pipeline junction blown up by saboteurs near Beiji, northern Iraq (news - web sites) in this Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2004 file photo. The breach shut down the pipeline ferrying crude oil from Kirkuk's huge oil field to an export terminal in Ceyhan, Turkey. Instead of being sold on the international market, oil burned on the desert and poured, still aflame, into the Tigris River. (AP Photo/US Army)

[grannylib]

1. Well, gol-ly...surprise, surprise, surprise! Sure, Chimp...Iraqi oil money

will pay for Iraq reconstruction. I didn't believe it when he said it...his plan all along has been to bankrupt the treasury and make those least able to pay, pay and pay and pay and pay...all the while letting the 'haves and the have mores...his base' slide by easy, as usual.

[VegasWolf]

2. Making fun of our prez? We really shouldn't, it must be hard to

to be prez with an IQ of 75. Having money != smart!

New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional

[grannylib]

5. 75?? I think you are being generous, there...but then, most Liberals are!

Too kind.

[maddezmom]

3. where has old Wolfie been lately???

[leftchick]

7. Licking his comb no doubt.... Remember this?

"We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon," he told a House committee in March 2003.




Why are all of these people just plain creepy??

[bemildred]

4. Frankly, it's peanuts compared to what we are squandering

on this stupid war. :puke:
Oooooooops! Did I get off the authorized subject list?

[aquart]

6. And nobody guessed this would happen???

Because I recall writing it right here on DU, that they would never let us use their oil, that they would blast and blast and blast.......it was so easy to predict.

Wait, they were supposed to be thrilled that we invaded their nation and co-opted their wealth. Uh huh.

These are the people who believed that slaves where happy because they were polite and sang a lot.