WASHINGTON POST: SOLDIERS WALK THE STREETS OF BAGHDAD HANDING OUT AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO IRAQIS

Money as a Weapon. A modest program to put cash in Iraqis' hands stretches its mandate with big projects.

By Dana Hedgpeth and Sarah CohenWashington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 11, 2008; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/10/AR2008081002512.html

In the five-year struggle to finish the war in Iraq, military leaders and their troops have said a particular weapon is among the most effective in their arsenal:
American cash.

Soldiers walk the streets carrying thousands of dollars to pay Iraqis for doorways battered in American raids and limbs lost during firefights. Sheiks appeal to commanders to use larger pools of money locked away in Humvees and safes at military bases for new schools, health clinics, water treatment plants and generators, knowing that the military can bypass Iraqi and U.S. bureaucratic hurdles.

Army documents show that $48,000 was spent on 6,000 pairs of children's shoes; an additional $50,000 bought 625 sheep for people described in records as "starving poor locals" in a Baghdad neighborhood. Soldiers ordered $100,000 worth of dolls and $500,000 in action figures made to look like Iraqi Security Forces. About $14,250 was spent on "I Love Iraq" T-shirts. More than $75,000 sent a delegation to a women's and civil rights conference in Cairo. And $12,800 was spent for two pools to cool bears and tigers at Zawra Park Zoo in Baghdad.

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