U.S. troops use cash to woo Iraqis

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http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printsto.../world/2701213

Military gives thousands to help the jobless and counter offers to kill Americans
By DOUG STRUCK
Washington Post

TIKRIT, IRAQ - Cash has become the U.S. military's first line of defense in some parts of Iraq, where U.S. soldiers are distributing money to encourage good will and to counter their enemies' offers of money to unemployed Iraqis willing to attack Americans, officers say here.

Even patrol leaders now carry envelopes of cash to spend in their areas. The money comes from brigade commanders, who get as much as $50,000 to $100,000 a month to distribute for local rehabilitation and emergency welfare projects through the Commanders Emergency Response Program.

The targets at which the cash is aimed are the restless legions of unemployed Iraqi men, many of them former soldiers, policemen and low-level members of the Baath Party of ousted president Saddam Hussein. They were put out of work when the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, ordered a de-Baathification of Iraq. U.S. soldiers say those men are vulnerable to entreaties to carry out an attack on the Americans for pay.

"I have met two guys now who say, 'I don't love you and I don't hate you. But somebody's offered me $200 to set up a mortar or a (roadside bomb), and there's a bonus if we kill you,' " said Lt. Col. Randall Potterf, the civil affairs officer for the Army's 1st Infantry Division.

Commanders have the go-ahead to dish out tens, hundreds and thousands of dollars with little more paperwork than a signed receipt. Often, the cash is paid in return for a promise to perform a small community project, but it also is given to Iraqis to buy items they say are necessary.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, commander of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment in Tikrit, said he had paid $500 to a driver to get his car repaired, paid "benevolent" money to the family of a victim of violence, paid people to clean streets, bought soccer uniforms for a team and repaired a swimming pool, among other expenditures. "I'm trying to give them something to do rather than take shots at someone," said Sinclair, who said he gets $50,000 every three or four weeks to distribute.

For more than a year, the Commanders Emergency Response Program was funded with $105 million taken from Iraqi reconstruction funds. But the Defense Department will begin paying for the program and has requested $300 million as part of its fiscal 2005 budget request to Congress.