(Please click on Permalink/Full Post below to read the whole post.)
Felix Salmon has a phenomenal example of how the Vice President tried to mislead the American people last night. In response to the standard charge that the United States is paying 90% of the Coalition's costs, the Vice President said last night:
The allies have stepped forward and agreed to reduce and forgive Iraqi debt to the tune of nearly $80 billion by one estimate. That, plus $14 billion they promised in terms of direct aid, puts the overall allied contribution financially at about $95 billion, not to the $120 billion we've got, but, you know, better than 40 percent. So your facts are just wrong, Senator.
Felix Salmon has a massive rebuttal:
"Now it just so happens that the one thing I really do know about is Iraq's sovereign debt: I just wrote a 6,600-word cover story on the subject for the September issue of Euromoney...Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. But the $80 billion figure is just crazy. Here are the facts.
Firstly, "the allies", as that term is generally understood, can't possibly reduce Iraq's debt by "nearly $80 billion", because they don't even have that much in Iraqi debt. The US is owed about $4.4 billion, the UK is owed less than $2 billion, and all of eastern Europe combined is owed maybe $6 billion – mostly to countries like Bulgaria, who weren't part of the coalition in the first place. . .Secondly, no one's "stepped forward and agreed" anything. . .Thirdly, there are certainly people out there who think that Iraq's debt will be reduced by $80 billion. But that's all in the future: it hasn't happened yet. Cheney's verb tense ("have agreed") is unambiguous: he's saying this has already happened. It hasn't. . .More broadly, Cheney is comparing apples with oranges. Consider the hypothetical case of a French contractor who built a hospital in Iraq in the 1980s. Iraq was tardy on its payments, and eventually, after the invasion of Kuwait, stopped them entirely. Of the $20 million total cost, let's say only $10 million was paid. Because the contract was supported by French export credit guarantees, the French government took on the debt, paying the contractor itself. Today, with past-due interest, the $10 million that Iraq owed has grown to $20 million. If France agrees to write off 75% of that debt, then, by Cheney's calculus, it's contributing $15 million towards Iraq, $15 million which is entirely comparable (if you're Cheney) to $15 million in real US taxpayer dollars which is being spent by the US government on troops and munitions and reconstruction and the like."
In other words, Cheney is givng the same value to a French accounting agreement as to American taxpayers. My excerpt has left out lots of facts; it's well worth reading Felix Salmon's original post. Pass it on.
