We pay with a slumping economy, and our soldiers pay with their lives!
Why??


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq is raking in more money from oil exports than it is spending, amassing a projected four-year budget surplus of up to $80 billion, U.S. auditors reported Tuesday.

Leading members of Congress, noting that Washington is paying for reconstruction in Iraq, expressed outrage at the assessment. One called the findings "inexcusable."

"We should not be paying for Iraqi projects while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4-a-gallon gas prices in the U.S.," said Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We should require that U.S. taxpayers be reimbursed for the cost of large projects."

Baghdad had a $29 billion budget surplus between 2005 to 2007. With the price of crude roughly doubling in the past year, Iraq's surplus for 2008 is expected to run between $38 billion and $50 billion, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The United States has put about $48 billion toward reconstruction since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, auditors reported. About $23 billion of that was spent on the oil and electricity industries, water systems and security.

Iraq spent $3.9 billion on those sectors from 2005 through April 2008, according to the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/05/iraq.oil/?iref=hpmostpop

We did go in unprovoked and blow their infastructure all to hell. Sooo maybe we are obligated to spend some money to rebuild it.

We established a policy of rebuilding the countries we destroy after WWII. We rebuilt Germany and Japan, and totally ignored allies like China (which cost us in 1951).

I think the policy is stupid. There is a reason we go in and blow countries up, they might be bad or misguided ones, but we have reasons. If we go to all the trouble to destroy something, why do we rebuild it. Doesn't that give our enemies a foothold on which to rebuild? Do we have the audacity to think that if we build them a country they are all of a sudden going to "love America?"

Why should we build the economy of a foriegn power when we don't have one ourself?