http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/03/08/iraq.main/index.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two senators are asking congressional investigators to look at Iraq's oil revenues and see if the war-ravaged nation can pay for its own reconstruction, an effort that has been bankrolled to this point mostly by U.S. taxpayers.
1 of 3 Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and John Warner, R-Virginia, said in their Friday letter to the Government Accountability Office that Iraq has "tremendous resources" in banks worldwide but is doing little to improve security and reconstruction efforts.
Iraqi officials did not immediately respond to the senators' allegations.
"We believe that it has been overwhelmingly U.S. taxpayer money that has funded Iraq reconstruction over the last five years, despite Iraq earning billions of dollars in oil revenue over that time period that have ended up in non-Iraqi banks," wrote the senators, who are their party's top members on the Armed Services Committee.
The senators cited testimony of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who told a House subcommittee in March 2003 that the U.S. would not foot the entire bill for rebuilding Iraq. Wolfowitz predicted then that Iraq's oil revenues could reach between $50 billion and $100 billion in the next two or three years.
"We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon," Wolfowitz said in 2003.