From Turley, CNN reports that Iraq is sitting on an $80 billion dollar oil surplus while we keep paying for its reconstruction.  How wonderful to be a superpower, so fabulously wealthy that we can indulge our fantasies around the world.

Leading members of Congress, noting that Washington is paying for reconstruction in Iraq, expressed outrage at the assessment. One called the findings “inexcusable.”

Baghdad had a $29 billion budget surplus between 2005 to 2007. With the price of crude roughly doubling in the past year, Iraq’s surplus for 2008 is expected to run between $38 billion and $50 billion, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The United States has put about $48 billion toward reconstruction since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, auditors reported. About $23 billion of that was spent on the oil and electricity industries, water systems and security.

Raise your hand if you feel that we are doing so spectacularly well that we have money to burn.  Everyone with their hand raised need read no further. 

The Iraqi government is of the view that the oil surplus is theirs, and the job of reconstructing a country we invaded and forces into turmoil is ours.  While the United States may be in a position to disagree and force the issue, we haven’t as yet.  This begs the question of why we are using our tax dollars to rebuild Iraq when they have their petro dollars available to do so.

The issue raised the hackles of several members of Congress earlier this year — particularly because Bush administration officials said on the eve of the war that Iraqi oil money would pay for reconstruction.

In 2003, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the House Appropriations Committee: “We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

When Paul Wolfowitz spoke, people assumed the worst.  This proved that the invasion of Iraq was just a cynical excuse to steal their oil; this was war for oil, the mob cried.  Now, in the waning days of the Bush Administration, with all the players except the big guy himself gone from the scene, fear permeates the air.  George W. Bush does not want to leave office proving that the mob was right, that his legacy was war for oil.  They wouldn’t touch that oil money with a ten foot pole. 

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said Tuesday’s report “is going to make a lot of American families very angry.”

“The record gas prices they are paying have turned into an economic windfall for Iraq, but the Iraqi government isn’t spending the money on rebuilding,” said Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

But if the Democrats demand it, force the issue, bring it to the table, that’s different.  We can’t blame that one on Bush.  We can’t claim that it’s part of the Wolfowitz scheme of world domination.  And the Democrats need only point to the cost of gas at the pump to prove how unfair this is.

The notion that the invasion of Iraq was all about oil never appealed to me.  It was the cabal of Wolfowitz, that the United States take its rightful place of making the rest of the world our playground, asserting our superiority without shame or fear, that drove our philosophy.  Others will disagree. 

It never struck me as disingenuous in the least to use Iraqi oil money to rebuild that country, assuming that the Iraqis weren’t terribly unhappy with us for turning their world upside down without permission.  Even so, their money would be used there, for their benefit to the extent it was sucked up by favored American contractors and diverted to the Sovereign Nation of Texas. 

It similarly did not disturb me that my tax dollars were not shipped to Iraq.  I had no say in the decision, and didn’t feel any particular obligation to pay for it.  Those who provided their vociferous support to our President, the people who put “freedom isn’t free” bumper stickers on their car, should be required to pay for it, on the other hand.  They should pay the price for their beliefs, and leave me out of it.

But we are now at a different stage in time, where all the excuses, explanations and arguments, both for and against, have become so muddled that most Americans neither remember nor care how we got into this mess and just want to get out.  Perhaps the time has come to draw a line, apologize for all the stupidity that happened before and announce that we need to act in our own self-interest despite our foolish and self-serving ways.

We were wrong to get in.  Even the people who voted for President Bush are largely of that view now.  And we don’t know how to get out.  But one thing has become clear to Americans:  We can’t afford to play this game anymore.  If we don’t stop pretending that we are so powerful and fabulously wealthy that this doesn’t matter, we will end up asking Iraq for a loan to cover our savings bonds.

The only way to rationally address this is to admit that we made a mistake and that we are now compelled to rectify it by telling Iraq that we are done shipping money over there.  The well is dry.  I would like to take this a step farther, and reimburse ourselves for the expenses paid to date.

This is not a principled position.  We are far too late for that.  This is a position taken by a desperate nation that has compounded its mistakes over the past 8 years to take a wealthy and strong nation and turn it into a third world wannabe.  But it doesn’t bother me, because I never agreed to go along with the program in the first place, and I feel no reason to suffer the consequences now.  I never screamed that this was war for oil, and couldn’t care less about President Bush’s legacy.

Let the Bush supporters pay.  Let Iraq pay.  Let the “war for oil” crowd pay.  But I don’t want to pay.  This is not what I signed on for.