Iraq Posting Massive Surplus Thanks To U.S. Taxpayers

Even as the United States has been borrowing trillions to pursue its wars in the Middle East, the government of Iraq has posted a tidy surplus, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

The report makes a direct link between U.S. government spending -- including $642 billion on U.S. military operations there and $24 billion for training and equipping the Iraqi security forces -- and Iraq's cumulative surplus of $52.1 billion through the end of 2009.

For comparison purposes, Iraq's annual gross domestic product is $65.8 billion. Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt has soared from $6.4 trillion to $13.4 trillion since former president George W. Bush invaded Iraq and decided to borrow the money for wars and slash taxes.

The GAO report concludes with an understated recommendation that "Congress may wish to consider Iraq's available financial resources" when reviewing future funding requests to support the Iraqi security forces.

The report notes that the Obama administration is currently requesting $2 billion in additional U.S. funding in its fiscal year 2011 budget request to support the training and equipping of Iraq's military and police.

Discrepancies in Iraqi accounting led the GAO to report wide ranges in some areas. For instance, the report says that through the end of 2009 Iraq had between $15.3 billion and $32.2 billion in financial deposits held at the Central Bank of Iraq, the Development Fund for Iraq in New York, and state-owned banks in Iraq. That's quite a range.

Measuring the exact size of the Iraqi surplus is made even more difficult due to the "misappropriation of government funds and inaccurate reporting of expenditures," the scale of which is unknown but potentially staggering.

The report states that according to Iraqi government data, the country's security ministries increased their spending from 2005 through 2009 and set aside about $5.5 billion to buy U.S. weapons. "However, over this 5-year period, these ministries did not use between $2.5 billion and $5.2 billion of their budgeted funds that could have been used to address security needs," the report states.

Days after the invasion began, Bush-era deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz famously told Congress that Iraq could "really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."

The GAO now reports: "Iraq's large oil reserves offer the government the potential to contribute to the country's current and future security and stabilization requirements. Oil revenues account for over 50 percent of the country's gross domestic product and about 90 percent of the government's revenues."

Meanwhile, Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at Columbia University, and Harvard public policy expert Linda J. Bilmes, estimate that the true cost of the Iraq war to American taxpayers is more than $3 trillion.

Comments

[WasteNJ]

12:42 PM on 09/14/2010

"Congress may wish to consider Iraq's available financial resources"

Cut the cord! Iraq is a small nation sitting on top of massive oil reserves. They had their auctions for the oil fields, they are up and running, so let them pay the tab for their own security at this point. We can pay for our own military (since we put them there), but let the Iraqis pay for the training they are receiving!

Time to man-up, and by that I mean Congress.

[Jackyldo]

11:59 AM on 09/14/2010

Yes their oil revenue will pay for our helping them gain their freedom.. so sad that we read this story and take the whole thing as a Trillion Dollar and Hundreds of Thousands of lives - Joke.

[ItsAD]

11:44 AM on 09/14/2010

If Iraq's GDP is really $65.8 Billion, that would be the highest figure of all time--- and more than five times what it was just prior to the US invasion. Considering we destroyed most of their infrastructure, I'm willing to bet that it's heavily subsidized by the U.S.

[WasteNJ]

12:48 PM on 09/14/2010

Also consider that China and other nations' oil firms won rights to several massive Iraqi oil fields, there's money flowing into Iraq that never happened in the past. Before the invasion, the oil fields were nationalized, one of the reasons we went in... you know, in the name of the free market.

[OutAtFirst]

11:24 AM on 09/14/2010

Empire building in the middle east has been a tar-baby since the beginning of time.I honestly don't know what the Bush administration could have been thinking, especially with the barely concluded Russian misadventure in Afghanistan as a fresh reminder.

[freethinkergirl]

12:36 PM on 09/14/2010

Bush et.al should be in jail!!!!!

A 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” prepared by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of VP Dick Cheney.

The report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, Iraq sat on the world’s second largest oil reserves.

“Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East,” the report said.

The advisory committee that prepared the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of BP; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

Those companies stand to earn tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts in a U.S.-brokered deal that was recently announced to drill Iraq’s untapped oil fields.

James Baker was a prominent "oil" lawyer who served as Secretary of State under G.H.W. Bush and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.

Ken Lay, Enron Corp., made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.
At the time of the report, Cheney was leading his "energy task force" of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a “National Energy Policy” for Bush.

Bush’s Treasury Secretary, O’Neill, described a WH interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of Bushs presidency.”

[freethinkergirl]

12:38 PM on 09/14/2010

F&F..#51

1992

Halliburton's Brown/Root is paid $9 million by the Pentagon (Cheney is Secretary of Defense) producing a classified report detailing how private companies could provide logistical support for US troops in potential war zones around the world.

1995

Cheney leaves the DD, becomes CEO of Halliburton.

The company garners $2.3 billion in U.S. government contracts.

1997

Cheney creates the rightwing policy group Project for the New American Century. They advocate for the removal of Saddam's Iraqi regime in January 1998, and is later revealed to be the intellectual center of the drive to war in Iraq.

1998

Cheney oversees Halliburton's merger with Dresser, a company that helped Saddam Hussein rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the First Gulf War, despite economic sanctions against Iraq.

Halliburton uses two foreign subsidiaries to do $23 million worth of business with Iraq.

2002

Cheney warns that "sitting on ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam could be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control a great portion of the world's energy supplies."

WaPo describes Cheney as the "fulcrum of foreign policy", and his influence for a pro-war policy comes on the eve of a possible conflict with Iraq.

Cheney's wife, a senior fellow at AEI, the leading architects of the Bush's foreign policy and voice pushing the Bush's plan for "regime change" through war in Iraq.

[Geogravee]

11:13 AM on 09/14/2010

"You break it, you pay for it". We "broke Iraq" and so we had to pay for it, not Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz et al who took us into this war under false pretences of a threat and Al Queda's complicity with Iraq. It is not just Iraq and Afghanistan where we cant help but guarantee the security of countries. Look at our long years of military presence in Europe and East Asia (Japan, Korea etc)? Obviously Europe and Japan dont feel the threat/s upon them as much as we do or else they would be spending for their own defence. I am sure the defence department, the military-industrial complex and their friendly "hawks" in high places are actively searching for new places in the far corners of the world where they can bravely guarantee security against " very real threats", while domestically we are unemployed and losing our homes.

[freethinkergirl]

12:39 PM on 09/14/2010

Bingo!!! See my two posts above on this thread....

[cooperone]

11:04 AM on 09/14/2010

Outsorcing is not just about jobs anymore! Thanks a whole heck of alot Bush and company! (jerks!)

[freethinkergirl]

12:40 PM on 09/14/2010

That's saying it mildly....

[Adrian31]

11:04 AM on 09/14/2010

America isn't the only 'corporation' Bush has bankrupted to make others rich, so this comes as little surprise...

[freethinkergirl]

12:40 PM on 09/14/2010

While Haliburton and it's subsidiaries are making billions, all offshore!!! #30

[pene]

11:02 AM on 09/14/2010

Come on people, you think that the insurance industry didn't want to get on board the gravy train that is the natural outcome of our adventures as the world's policemen? why should haliburton get all the money?
Our military believe they get special treatment: they just didn't realize how special that treatment was going to be. But remember, this is what laissez-faire capitalism does best: . Transfer money to the wealthy and the expense of everyone else.
.

[runforfun54]

10:59 AM on 09/14/2010

Way to go Bushies.

[lostfan13]

10:57 AM on 09/14/2010

Unfortunately that's what passes for 'diplomacy'. We just throw money at our problems, which tends to encourage the misbehavior -- North Korea is a prime example.

[suzc]

10:49 AM on 09/14/2010

So Bush and Co. robbed US workers to make a few Iraqis super-rich in hopes of getting oil contracts for Bush/Cheney/Saudi corps. Surprised?

[CoastalNC]

10:30 AM on 09/14/2010

Well....how very nice for them!!! Can we send them a bill yet?

[jsgaetano]

10:21 AM on 09/14/2010

Turns out it's pretty easy to save money when someone else is paying all your bills.

Guess we can consider it "hush money" for all the crimes conservatives are committing over there.

[den1953]

10:18 AM on 09/14/2010

Maybe this country is doing it all wrong maybe the USA should have another nation occupy us and bomb the crap out of this nation so we can get our nation back to financial shape again, of course i am being sarcastic before any Tea Baggers jump all over this!

[jsgaetano]

10:21 AM on 09/14/2010

Can't see why Teabaggers would object. They attack America every chance they get.

[den1953]

10:35 AM on 09/14/2010

They enjoy jumping on anything a liberal writes in huff post to prove their ignorance even sarcastic threads get taken seriously to them but then again when you are a member of the party of sheep i suppose i should expect that!

[den1953]

10:09 AM on 09/14/2010

Do not be alarmed this story is just another history judging stories that the Bush years have dumped on the American people stay tuned for more of the same from Afghanistan and other points in the mid east, i am almost certain someone will find those pallets of money the tax payers sent over to those countries.