$20 Billion? Allah Works In Wondrous Ways ...

[weldon_berger]

Now that it's apparent the political future of Iraq rests in the hands of one guy, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, maybe it's time to wonder what that $200 billion and all those dead people have accomplished, and where the $20 billion Congress voted to give to Iraq will end up.

Dis what de crystal ball say, mon.

• by the end of 2004, the neoconservatives' hand-picked successor to Saddam, Ahmed Chalabi, will have left the building toting perhaps a billion more than he had when he checked in.



• Halliburton and Bechtel will have made a mint, and they'll make a bunch more when our government compensates the firms for revenue lost when the new Iraqi government kicked out the US and began awarding prime contractor bids to <gasp> Iraqi companies.



• Sadr City, the wrong side of the Baghdad tracks and home to the most determinedly anti-American Shia, will benefit from a flood of reconstruction and improvement money in order to pacify the militant clergy there.



• The US will find a way to inadvertently screw the Kurds as we leave.



• Tom DeLay, once he's been deposed for the lawsuit against his Texas redistricting plan, will find a really creative justification for handing $20 billion over to people who, to most Americans, look a lot like those other people in The Axis of Evil—you know, the ones in Iran we were threatening to invade next.



• A GAO (Government Accounting Office) report will conclude that $9 billion of the $20 billion remains completely unaccounted for.



• Footage of the president landing in front of that Mission Accomplished banner, and footage of the turkey serving crow to US troops in Iraq, will play a prominent role in Democratic campaign commercials.



• The new Iraqi government will eventually sue the US for crippling the oil production facilities in northern Iraq during the occupation



• Former president Bush will be locked in his room by the other former president Bush and forced to read four years worth of newspaper and magazine back issues. He will emerge, in ten years, a changed man.



• The 2006 elections will see the first Gulf War II amputee elected to the Senate, solidifying the Democratic majority despite the best efforts of Republicans to paint him, or her, as soft on defense.



• Turkey will attempt to enlist NATO support for its invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, claiming that the continuing spate of suicide bombings in Turkey are being supported by Kurish separatists.



• Richard Perle will insist that the invasion of Iraq was a perfectly sound idea that was sabotaged by Colin Powell and the weak sisters of Europe.



• Tony Blair will get to spend a lot more time at the pub playing Risk.

_{All predictions for entertainment purposes only. Void where prohibited by law. Billing disputes are the responsibility of the consumer and his or her local telephone company. For customer service, call 202-456-1414 and ask for Miss Cleo.}

[Pale_Rider]

1. On the subject of Tony Blair playing Risk ...

... I found this little disturbing tibit about Bush's aide playing Risk on Air Force One.

http://www.usaweekend.com/03_issues/030601/030601whosnews.html

In his new book, "Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes", Walsh tells what really happens on board: "Each president sets a different mood. Clinton's blended serious policy discussions with a late-night college dormitory bull session that would go on for hours." Although Bush is "a more disciplined flier" who doesn't wander the halls as his predecessor did, he enjoys watching staffers vie for world domination playing the board game Risk.