Isn’t it time Iraq started paying for reconstruction? Ensign, others say yes

By Lisa Mascaro (contact)

Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Not since late last year has the war in Iraq been the top issue on voters’ minds.

In poll after poll, Iraq slips down the list — usually No. 2, but sometimes dropping another rung.

Jobs and the economy have topped voter concerns as the mortgage mess unfolded, unemployment rates soared higher than post-9/11 levels in Nevada, and $4-a-gallon-gas emerged during the summer driving season.

This time last year the nation awaited Army Gen. David Petraeus’ assessment of whether President Bush’s troop surge had been worth the year’s mounting military and civilian death tolls.

This August, pocketbooks are our focus. But Iraq is never far away — always there in the middle of our domestic and foreign policy debates, whether we see it or not.

A report this month from the General Accountability Office showed that since 2005, Iraq has amassed $79 billion in oil revenues — some of it sitting in bank reserves while the United States continues to foot the bill for Iraqi reconstruction.

It’s the Pottery Barn theory again. You break it, you own it, as former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Bush on the eve of the war.

Many think that because we invaded Iraq, we owe the country the decency of putting it back together.

But a growing chorus is joining Nevada’s Republican Sen. John Ensign, who has long argued that the Iraqi government needs to start footing the bill for its own reconstruction.

That $4-a-gallon gas is going somewhere.

A recent New York Times editorial said, “Congress is finally losing patience with the indefensible image of Americans paying historic high gasoline prices while Iraq pockets huge profits and Americans underwrite Iraq’s rebuilding.”

Similarly, professors Linda J. Bilmes of Harvard University and Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University, co-authors of “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict,” wrote last week in the Los Angeles Times: “The oil windfall is yet another example of the ongoing financial fallout of the war, which is costing the U.S. more than $13 billion a month (not counting the future costs of caring for war veterans and replenishing military equipment).”

“None of the work we’ve done there since is adequate compensation for the five years of suffering that the Iraqi people have endured,” the scholars wrote.

“But at a time when the U.S. economy is weak and our own bridges, roads and airports are in desperate need of repair, there is a real question of whether we can sustain subsidizing Iraq’s rebuilding on this scale.”

In early May, as gas prices were creeping up, Ensign spotted the rising Iraqi oil revenue trend. He and 10 other senators urged Bush to consider making loans, rather than grants, for Iraqi reconstruction.

Congress has given the White House war funding through the start of the next administration. Some members are now asking for second look, though it is unclear whether they will gain any support in the final weeks of Congress.

Last week, Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley toured the Veterans Affairs hospital under construction in Las Vegas. Scheduled to open in 2011, it will be a first for Southern Nevada, and just in time.

Not only is the valley home to a significant veterans population from past wars, it is increasingly seeing troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

National studies show troops returning with post-traumatic stress disorders, alcohol abuse and often invisible traumatic brain injuries. They require serious and ongoing medical care. And in Nevada, and elsewhere, that will cost.