THE MEMORY HOLE REVISITED….April 23, 2003, USAID administrator Andrew Natsios chats with Ted Koppel about the cost of rebuilding Iraq on Nightline:
TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) And we’re back once again with Andrew Natsios, administrator for the Agency for International Development. I want to be sure that I understood you correctly. You’re saying the, the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion. No more than that?ANDREW NATSIOS
For the reconstruction. And then there’s 700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid ’cause it’s charities that get that money.TED KOPPEL
(Off Camera) I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?ANDREW NATSIOS
That is our plan and that is our intention. And these figures, outlandish figures I’ve seen, I have to say, there’s a little bit of hoopla involved in this.
This is from the Google cache. Oddly, though, it seems to have been removed from the USAID site itself ? although the link is still alive and well here. Why do you suppose that is?
