E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Iraqi newspaper questions external debts
From the newspaper Al-Taakhi in Baghdad, also from MEMRI. I'll stop after this but it's delicious.
An editorial by Al-Taakhi asks: "Are there detestable and non-detestable debts? The answer is yes, the detestable ones are those imposed on you unknowingly and without your consent. This is what happened to the Iraqi people, where we find ourselves in debt to other countries at the tune of 130 billion dollars
 And no one has the answer to the why, how and for what. It is a debt inherited from the former regime, a despotic regime which dealt with the world based on personal decisions whose goal was to drain this country's resources and the future of its people without their knowledge

Wonder if Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi know this? Gotta be news to them.
"It hurts us to think about this debt, and it hurts us to read a statement by Jordan's finance minister that Iraq owes Jordan 25 billion dollars while we know that we have 500 billion dollars [sic.] frozen in Jordan
 We do not know whether the minister forgot that Iraq has, for many years and free of charge, supplied half of Jordan's oil needs
 Saddam did that based on a political consideration that [Jordan] would protect and defend [his] regime
 The Iraqi people cannot be held accountable for decisions made clandestinely by a ruler who wanted to preserve his regime at the expense of his nation
"
Wotta interesting concept!
The paper also questions reparations related to the second Gulf war which are estimated at 200 billion dollars and were imposed on Iraq by the U.N. According to the paper, even if Iraq pays all these debts, it will take years, during which, the country will remain poor and bankrupt.
Maybe Chirac & Co. are getting worried about ever getting re-paid? And I wonder how many tens of billions Saddam has stashed in foreign banks, and how much of that will never get recovered.
Posted by: Steve White 2003-10-04
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=19452