Is it true that we're paying for universal health care for Iraq?

[Killarney]

?

Someone just told me this, but I had never heard it before. They said we're going to setup universal health care for 25 million Iraqis. I thought the right thought universal health care was a pinko commie program?

[Inland]

1. Don't worry. Bush plans to keep it woefully underfunded so that it fails.

That way, the admin. isn't being hypocritical.

[Career Prole]

2. If they can find a hospital we haven't bombed yet and

a doctor who hasn't fled the country yet, we'll foot the bill for those troublesome pediatric shrapnel wounds.

[jdj]

3. oh, THAT'S why they are carpet bombing.

got to get those #'s down.

And I really don't consider a M.A.S.H. unit to be univeral health care, but to W's line of thinking it might be.

[doc03]

4. Why of course Iraq doesn't have all those nasty Trial Lawyers!

[flobee1kenobi]

5. yes

heath care and .29$ a gallon for gas

[sadiesworld]

6. Wouldn't surprise me.

The original plan was to privatize everything and create some sort of corporate utopia. Unfortunately for the uber-capitalists, the Iraqis who were accustomed to state supported healthcare, education and (to an extent) jobs, balked at these plans.

Things might have gone differently if "we" had implemeted programs like universal healthcare earlier.

I'd say it is too late.

[HamdenRice]

7. Almost free gas and free food

The system is ridiculous. The US had to continue Sadam's system of doling everything out. The concern was that if the US stopped, there would be food riots on top of all the other resistance.

[leesa]

8. Are you out of your mind?? They have no food, water, electricity. We

have murdered hundreds of thousands of them when they did NOTHING to them and you are whining about this?? We will owe these people reparations for a hundred years for the war crimes we committed against them.

It's THEIR damned gas, ahole.

[HamdenRice]

9. Leesa is apparently madly in love with Dick Cheney and Halliburton

I don't think you understand my point, nor the way the system is operating. As for the gas, it is not "their" gas -- it's Kuwait's. The Iraqi oil fields are inoperable because of the resistance.

The occupation has been paying Halliburton between $1.70 to $2.64 (depending on which account you read) to purchase gas in Kuwait that only costs $.96 in Kuwait. Halliburton then sells that gas in Iraq to Iraqis at the pump for between $.04 and $.15, because Sadam basically gave away gas to the Iraqi public, and the occupation is afraid to raise prices. The US taxpayer pays the difference, subsidizing the cost of gas. So for every gallon of gas that an Iraqi pays $.04 for, the US kicks in up to $2.60.

Most of that goes directly to Halliburton as profit. They have made somewhere $1 billion and $1.8 billion gouging the US taxpayer on gasoline given away almost free to Iraqis.

To be so angry you must really, REALLY love Dick Cheney and his company, Halliburton and believe they deserve to price gouge the US taxpayer, but I don't. I can't think of any other reason someone would defend this system, regardless of the horrors the US has unleashed on Iraqi civilians.

Another absurdity, is that because the gas is sold so cheaply in Baghdad, gas stations simply repump gas purchased at say $.04 in Baghdad, back into delivery trucks and smuggle it to Jordan, or even back to Kuwait, where it can be sold yet again to Halliburton for delivery into Iraq. So, despite the theoretically cheap prices, the gas never gets to Iraqi consumers. That's why I believe the system is absurd.

One can be against the war and equally against economically utterly absurd shell games that give away gas in Baghdad and line Halliburton's pockets. Apparently, you are not.