There is no plan for Iraq:

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:

Weeks 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.


posted by Quiddity at 8/11/2005 10:32:00 AM