Once Iraqis learn English they will be able to read their
‘Baghdad Fire Department’ T-shirts, but they still won’t have fire
engines or protective gear. And that’s just one of the many
mysteries in Bush’s latest military and ‘rebuilding’ request,
reports Matt Bivens in The Nation. Other oddities include
$400 million for jails (at $50,000 a bed), $30 million to teach
English as a second language (so they can read the T-shirts?), $100
million to put 100 families in the witness protection program, and
another billion to import oil into a country with world’s
second-largest oil reserves. South Dakota Democratic Senator Tim
Johnson is up in arms over the $9 million request to establish
Iraqi ZIP codes, ‘How has Iraq made it for these thousands of years
without Americans helping them develop a ZIP code? What a generous
thing for this administration to do for other people on the other
side of the planet, on our dime, borrowing money to do it.’ While
Bush ignores the economic crisis in this country, it is no surprise
he is ignoring the humanitarian crisis he caused half a world away.
His solution in both cases is to pile on the pork for his corporate
friends.
— Joel Stonington
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