Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
Recently there was the news about the mayor of Baghdad being ousted by a bunch of armed guys who put their man into office. It's not clear who really should have been mayor and if it was a coup or not. But in the New York Times story was this item of interest:TrackBackWeeks ago, Mr. Tamimi [the just ousted mayor] had offered to resign or retire, saying that the budget he had been given was not adequate. For a city of six million people, the central government had given him a budget of $85 million; he had requested $1 billion.What's an appropriate budget? For the 3.8 million people in the City of Los Angeles, the budget (PDF) is $5.3 billion. So $1 billion for Baghdad is in the ballpark (especially a war-ravaged urban area). But we read that only $85 million has been allocated, or $14 per city resident. If this is true, essentially no money is going to the capital of Iraq. One can only conclude that there is no serious plan for Iraq.
To be quite honest, remember, that's the amount funded through the City of Baghdad as opposed to funded for and in the city (small 'c') of Baghdad; that amounts to a fuckload of a lot more.
It's not that there's no plan for Iraq, it's that there was but it fell apart 6 weeks into the occupation and they'll keep flushing money and lives down the tubes as long as they can in order to deny that the plan ever went wrong.
Posted by: Froz Gobo at August 11, 2005 11:24 PMOh, there is a plan...what Baghdad needs is a corporate sponsor. Think: Burqa Rollback Savings at Walmart.
hey plenty of money is going through bagdad. the mayor simply isn't traded publicly.
Posted by: chris from boca at August 12, 2005 09:12 AM