As we’ve noted before, members of Congress have recently decided that it would be a great thing ™ to make Iraqis pay for their reconstruction or as Rahm Emanuel stated "They have got to have some skin in the game."

Not surprising, this is not going over well in Iraq. Fatih Abdulsalam of Azzaman Iraq makes this very clear:

Demands like these are not only unacceptable but are in a sense meant to punish Iraqis for the destruction and devastation U.S.-waged invasion and occupation of their country has caused.

Does it mean that the U.S. Congress wants us to pay billions of dollars for the reconstruction of bridges, hospitals, schools as well as cities, towns and villages U.S. warplanes and military might have destroyed?

(snip)

Iraqis have been made to pay with their blood which has been flowing like rivers since the U.S. invasion. And shockingly the U.S. would like them to pay for the destruction it has inflicted on their country as if their blood is not enough.

The U.S. is morally responsible for the construction of Iraq but it is doubtful whether its political leaders have any more morality left. The whole Iraq war is morally wrong. It is too much indeed to ask the U.S. to get it morally right.

Iraqi anger at such calls becomes even clearer when we look at a report by Anwar Jumaa, also in Azzaman, on the compensation being offered by US forces after yet another bombing of a hospital:

Health authorities in the Province of Babylon say U.S. troops are paying “peanuts” to cover for the extensive damage they have inflicted on the main hospital in the southern city of Hilla.

The troops say they bombed the hospital “by mistake” and they have offered $6500 as compensation.

But Mostafa al-Hiti, chairman of the Health and Environment Commission at the Iraqi Parliament, said “the money is not enough to cover for the broken glass.”

(snip)

Still worse, Hiti, said the U.S. was offering $100 for the families and relatives of those who were injured and killed as a result of what it allegedly calls “misfire.”

Hiti gave no figure of the casualties but the money other officials described as “an insult” which has further angered the bereaved families.

Skin in the game, Rahm? It seems the Iraqis are the ones getting skinned.

Video: Dr Dahlia Wasfi's testimony before the Democratic Congressional Forum on Iraq April 26, 2006 on the price the people of Iraq have already paid.