Sometimes irony is so much fun. For several months the US Army in Iraq has been equipping and funding Sunni resistance groups that are now turning on al-Qaeda fighters in their region. The Boston Globe has a story about how some of the tribal Sheiks who are receiving the money are skimming off the top:
"Current and former US officials privately estimate that some sheiks keep 20 percent or more of the money.
"Some sheiks do take some off the top," Colonel Martin Stanton, chief of reconciliation and engagement with the multinational forces in Iraq, acknowledged in a telephone interview. "But that's just their cultural model, and compared to the good its done and the chance that we have to go forward and bring peace, it's been well worth it."
But as US military forces draw down in the coming months and make plans to hand the program over to the Iraqi government, the funneling of money to Sunni sheiks has alarmed some US officials and members of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, who fear that the Sunnis could resume their attacks against either the government or Shi'ite militias if and when the cash dries up.
They say the United States needs to develop a longer-term strategy to ensure that the sheiks continue to support the Iraqi government when the US funds disappear.
"We're not thinking through the impact of abetting further corruption and perpetuating tribal power," said a senior US military adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Skimming? Off the top? Twenty per cent? Isn't that what American defence contractors in Iraq do every day? I thought that was called free enterprise or at least it is when the outfit hired goes by the name Halliburton or Blackwater.
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