Iraq: Grants v. Loans. Can anyone explain WHY grants?

[Bake]

The only thing I can figure is Smirk wants the oil money to be free to be siphoned off to Halliburton et al., instead of having to be paid back on U.S. loans. Can anyone please explain why it is an article of faith to the RePukes, worthy of a "presidential" veto, that the $87 billion must be grants and not loans? Iraq is sitting on the second largest pool of oil in the world. There is gold, black gold, under the sand there. Why in the world can't my tax dollars be paid back?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Bake

[Maple]

1. Grants not loans

because the US is trying to get other countries to forgive the loans Iraq has already.

[aldian159]

2. the administration says

that because Iraq owes the world like $120 Billion or something like that, we can't burden them with more loans.

Also, Dubya wants the rest of the world to forget and forgive the aforementioned $120 billion or so. France and Germany, as well as GB, aren't too happy...

Sorry, no links, but I'll look for one or two

[Mattforclark]

3. Generally

for the same reason that Chad, Botswana, and Bangladesh need grants instead of loans. IE Iraq cannot pay back loans. But the whole issue is rather meaningless. Any loans given would have been cancelled at a later date anyway. The whole loans debate was merely an electoral ploy on both sides of the issue.

The reason why your tax dollars cannot be paid back is because we need the rest of the world to become not dirt poor. It would be good if this applied to the entire world, and not merely Iraq and HIV/AIDS minus family planning. But hey, that's compassionate conservatism at work for ya.

[Bake]

4. That's too altruistic.

The "Iraw owes too much already" argument is too altruistic for the RePukes. There has to be a hidden angle to it, hence my supposition that Halliburton et al. want the oil money. Iraq could pay off $120 billion in loans, or more, easily once the oil starts flowing.

Bottom line, it HAS to be a profiteering motive behind the RePuke insistence on grants.

Bake

[legin]

5. I would have said loans are illegal

If the u.s./britain are the occupying power then u.s./britain is now fully responsible for Iraq.

It seems a bit off to trash a country by invading it, selling off its assets and then saddling it with debts for rebuilding before pushing off again.

[tom_paine]

6. Loans mean the Busheviks would have to pay money they defrauded

back to the people they defrauded it from (Imperial Subjects of Amerika), praticularly since, in Imperial Amerika, the Public Treasury is in fact the Imperial Family Privy Purse.

[tsipple]

7. Another Answer: Germany, World War I

Loans (and reparations) aren't very popular any more because of lessons learned from Germany after World War I.

It seems that the victorious European powers that extracted payments from the post-WWI German government bankrupted the country. That didn't make the new government terribly popular, and some guy named Adolf Hitler came to power as a result.

The Democrats totally misplayed the $87 billion, by the way. (What else is new?) Democrats should have been pushing for an independent investigation (with teeth) into the Iraq run-up in exchange for allowing the $87 billion to get through Congress. There are also many other items they could have gotten. For example, I would have pushed for increased payments to injured war veterans and the families of dead soldiers (and let the Republicans try to block that). And probably at least a partial repeal of the Patriot Act.

[maggrwaggr]

8. because we all want to make the people who hate us ... happy!

they want us dead, but we came to liberate them and make them happy!

So now we've figured out that killing us makes them .... happy!

So we're letting our guys stay in Iraq like sitting ducks so the Iraqis can shoot and kill them which makes them ..... happy!

We're giving them schools and hospitals and health care and new buildings and making it so they don't even have to pay us back because, after all, our job is to make them .... happy!

If I can sacrifice my life to make a few Iraqis ... happy! .... well I'll be happy as hell to go do it.