Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia had both asked for a congressional inquiry in regards to Iraq’s oil revenues. This is to see if the Iraqi government could use its own oil revenues to pay for its own reconstruction which has been going on ever since the invasion by United States forces back in 2003.
So far, the money that has been used for Iraq’s reconstruction had come from the taxpayers of the American people. Most of the United States budget so far has gone forth towards Iraq. Democratic frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have started to link Iraq with the current state of the United States economy.
But, both Senators Levin and Warner had sent a letter on Friday, March 7 to the Government Accountability Office. They have both explained while Iraq’s government has money in banks across the world, it has not done much to improve the nation’s security or improve the efforts of reconstructing the country.
“We believe that is has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks,” both the senators have written to the Government Accountability Office.
On another note, both senators are top members of their respective parties for the Armed Services Committee. In the request for the investigation, they would cite the testimony of Paul Wolfowitz. Back in March of 2003, when the invasion of Iraq started, Wolfowitz explained that the United States would not be paying the entire bill. He said that after two or three years, Iraqi’s oil revenues could reach the hundred billions.
“We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon,” Wolfowitz explained.
However, it is now 2008. Five years have passed ever since the US invasion of Iraq. The issue of Iraq’s oil revenue does raise a lot of questions.
At the time Wolfowitz was the Deputy Defense Secretary under then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld resigned from his post the day after the 2006 US Congressional elections where Democrats won control of Congress by a slim margin. Currently, Robert Gates is the new Secretary of Defense.
Both senators used the figures from both the U.S. Department of State and the Iraqi Oil Ministry. They concluded that the weekly average of oil production in Iraq is could go as high as 2.5 million barrels a day.
So far, the United States has spent more than $47 billion towards rebuilding Iraq. In a sense, the two senators have given the indication that from the oil revenues, Iraq’s government has more than enough money to continue on with the post-Saddam reconstruction.
The issue of Iraq’s oil revenues, this could possibly be a topic for both the Democratic and Republican races in regards to Iraq. So far, Iraq has been a major topic. This has been the major platform for the candidacy of Senator John McCain of Arizona who had clinched the GOP nomination.