{"id":248,"date":"2003-11-30T07:33:05","date_gmt":"2003-11-30T11:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=248"},"modified":"2003-11-30T07:33:05","modified_gmt":"2003-11-30T11:33:05","slug":"coincidence-certainly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"Coincidence certainly"},"content":{"rendered":"

The amount of the funding cited in this article<\/a> is so close in numbers to the recently contested reconstruction ‘budget’ Bush badgered critics in Congress<\/a> for, one can barely be distinguished from the other.<\/p>\n

An Australian heads $21 million of post-war reconstruction work, funded totally from seized bank accounts.<\/p>\n

At the ancient ruins of Babylon in Iraq where the biblical King Nebuchadnezzar once reigned, there is a new boss on the block – RAAF Group Captain Peter Wilkinson from Canberra.<\/p>\n

Wilkinson can hardly believe his title – director-general of the coalition’s post-war reconstruction effort in south central Iraq.<\/p>\n

“It’s quite remarkable. I’m the only Australian down here, and in such a key position,” he says at the multinational forces base at Babylon, where Black Hawk helicopters whir over palm trees and Romanian soldiers jog through the tourist walkways of the ancient site.<\/p>\n

Delegated responsibility for six provinces in Iraq, five of which are predominantly Shiite Muslim, Captain Wilkinson’s job is to approve post-war reconstruction projects presented to him by the 100 staffers under his direction. He has a budget of $US15 million ($A20.7 million).<\/p><\/div>\n

Apparently Bush isn’t unilaterally opposed to funding the reconstruction of Iraq with its own money after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The amount of the funding cited in this article is so close in numbers to the recently contested reconstruction ‘budget’ Bush badgered critics in Congress for, one can barely be distinguished from the other. An Australian heads $21 million of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-40","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}