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Cato Daily Dispatch for August 27, 2003

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Bremer: Iraq Will Need 'Tens of Billions' of Dollars
Iran Closer to Building Nuclear Weapons?
China Cracks Down on Reforms Debate

Bremer: Iraq Will Need 'Tens of Billions' of Dollars

"Iraq will need 'several tens of billions' of dollars from abroad in the next year to rebuild its rickety infrastructure and revive its moribund economy, and American taxpayers and foreign governments will be asked to contribute substantial sums, U.S. occupation coordinator L. Paul Bremer said yesterday," reports The Washington Post.

"Bremer said Iraqi revenue will not nearly cover the bill for economic needs 'almost impossible to exaggerate.' Just to meet current electrical demand will cost $2 billion, Bremer said, while a national system to deliver clean water will cost an estimated $16 billion over four years."

In "A Marshall Plan for Iraq?" Ian Vásquez, director of Cato's Project on Global Economic Liberty, writes: "Aid is not a necessary or a sufficient condition for economic recovery. The experiences of postwar Europe and parts of the developing world in recent decades confirm that economic freedom, not foreign aid, leads to growth and prosperity. The Iraqi reconstruction effort should concentrate on establishing the right policies and institutions for growth as quickly as possible. Those include the need for a sound currency, freedom of trade and exchange, and private property rights for all citizens, including the poor."

Iran Closer to Building Nuclear Weapons?

"International inspectors confirmed Tuesday that particles of highly enriched uranium had been discovered in two separate samples taken at a nuclear facility in Iran, raising the possibility that Tehran is further along in developing a nuclear weapon than experts had predicted," according to the Los Angeles Times.

"The finding was contained in a confidential report prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna that provided detailed descriptions of numerous contradictions and misstatements by Iran in recent months."

In "Iran: Déjà Vu All Over Again", Director of Defense Policy Studies Charles Peña writes: "The bottom line, however, is that Iran, like Iraq, is not a direct military threat to the United States, even if it possesses weapons of mass destruction. The terrorist groups Iran supports are anti-Israeli and do not currently target the United States. And the allegations of linkages to al Qaeda are as tenuous as the claims made about Iraq."

China Cracks Down on Reforms Debate

"After several months of permitting China's intellectuals the freedom to call for political reform, ponder far-reaching revisions to the constitution and consider changes in the official history of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Communist Party has ordered a halt to such debate, and security personnel have begun harassing leading academics, economists and legal scholars, sources here say," The Washington Post reports.

"In the past weeks, party organizations, research institutes and universities have been instructed to stop all conferences and suppress all essays about those three topics, according to sources within the Communist Party. The new instructions spell out these 'three unmentionables,' while the Propaganda Ministry has informed China's news media that there are additional subjects that can no longer be broached, the sources said."

In "A New Mantra for China: Seek Truth From Freedom" James Dorn, a China specialist and editor of the Cato Journal, writes: "The party's deliberate attempt to hide the truth about its role in the Cultural Revolution, by banning books by [Nien] Cheng and others, and by romanticising Mao, may protect its hold on power in the short term, but not in the long run. Eventually, economic liberalisation, a growing middle class and the global flow of information through the Internet will generate increasing pressure for political reform. China's new mantra should be: 'Seek truth from freedom.'"

Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org