>The English-language Al-Jazeera website reports that:
>
>"Of the $18.4bn Washington provided last year for
>rebuilding Iraq, only $366m - about two per cent - has
>been used, a White House report admitted on 28 June."
>
>Has anybody heard anything like this elsewhere?
Yep. It's true. You probably missed it because in their cynical fashion, the White House released these numbers Friday afternoon before the long July 4th weekend. They have allocated a few billion more, meaning the remainder can be used to keep Allawi in line (on the off chance he has to be). But don't worry, the Iraqis haven't gone without: The CPA helpfully spent or allocated 95% of Iraq's oil revenues, a goodly chunk of it in the last few weeks before transfer of sovereignty.
Zeynep and Rahul Mahajan "blogged" (what an ugly verb) insightfully about this:
http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000093 http://www.empirenotes.org/july04.html#05jul042