US program has spent $2.8 billion using ‘money as a weapon’ in Iraq<\/p>\n
AP\u00a0<\/p>\n
A U.S. Army program in which soldiers pay cash to Iraqis to help with expenses, large and small, has spent $2.8 billion in five years, The Washington Post reported Monday.<\/p>\n
The Post reviewed records of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, which was intended for short-term humanitarian relief and reconstruction. The field manual laying out the guidelines for the program is called “Money as a Weapon System,” pointing up the effectiveness of cold hard cash in winning over the hearts and minds of Iraqi civilians.<\/p>\n
The largest sum of CERP money, $596.8 million, was spent on water and sanitation projects, the Post reported. Three other categories each received more than $300 million: electricity, protective measures (such as fencing and guards), and transportation and roads.<\/p>\n
But the Army also spent lesser sums on smaller acts of largesse, including $48,000 for children’s shoes; $50,000 for 625 sheep; $100,000 for dolls; and $500,000 for action figures designed to look like Iraqi security forces, the Post reported.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US program has spent $2.8 billion using ‘money as a weapon’ in Iraq AP\u00a0 A U.S. Army program in which soldiers pay cash to Iraqis to help with expenses, large and small, has spent $2.8 billion in five years, The Washington Post reported Monday. The Post reviewed records of the Commander’s Emergency Response Program, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[64,38,5624],"class_list":{"0":"post-4353","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-world-news","8":"tag-iraq","9":"tag-money"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}