Victory for Iraqi People
The U.N. Security Council has unanimously voted to end all economic sanctions against Iraq. This is fantastically good news for the Iraqi people, and for America.
It means that the cost of rebuilding Iraq will be paid for by Iraq. It means jobs for Iraqis, and much greater odds of success in our project to build a better society there. It probably even means that America will wind up spending less money on rebuilding Iraq than it did on maintaining the "No Fly Zones" and the base in Saudi Arabia.
There's no down side at all. This is really wonderful.
(Via Inoperable Terran.)
A possible downside: the french are unhappy.
Oh, wait...
Huzzah! Will wonders never cease. Man, I bet there are some chapped behinds in the E.U. today, not least of which is Chirac.
Seriously, this is great news for the Iraqis. I don't know that it's going to get us off the hook for paying the tab on the restructuring, but it's a step forward. Remember that oil prices are not that great to begin with, and even optimistic estimates of Iraqi oil exports are that it will take years for them to get to full production.
Now, if we could just get Cuba to come to its senses...
The WaPo story on it says that there is an immediate $1 Billion going to the US Military out of the current oil for food fund to pay for already incurred rebuilding costs, so it looks like it will largely be on Iraq's ultimate nickel. And there's a suspension of foreign debt repayments until there is a coherent Iraqi govt., a number of years at least.
They'd better get the power grid up with a quickness now that there's no sancion issue slowing things down!
I agree, win-win all the way around (the Weasels are spinning it as a step toward reconcilliation with us, see the WaPo story I link...arg, blogger archives evil, and no trackback...click my name to go to my blog if you care :-)