Follow the Money

An oft-repeated piece of advice to detectives trying to solve a mystery is “Follow the money!” It’s a good piece of advice, as people are much more inclined to show their true feelings in how they obtain or spend money than they will in their words.

So with that in mind, consider this piece of news:

From the Washington Times:

Iraq’s Red Crescent relief organization found its own way to mark the Thanksgiving holiday yesterday by announcing that it had sent a $1 million “thank you” donation to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The sum, transferred by wire on Sunday, amounts to 20 percent of the organization’s annual budget.

“I wish we could have a billion dollars to give,” Said Hakki, the organization’s president, said by telephone from Baghdad. “Even then, it is not enough to show our appreciation for what the U.S. has done for Iraq and is still doing."

The donation was made with the approval of the office of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and is thought to mark the first time that Iraq has sent aid to the United States.

Haydar al-Abadi, a senior adviser to the prime minister, said in a separate telephone interview that he was worried that the gesture — though noble — could prompt complaints that the money should have been spent on the country’s own emergencies.

But Mr. Hakki was adamant.

“Giving thanks is an Iraqi tradition as well as an American one. This is the minimum we could do after the Americans shed their blood in our country, mixing their blood with ours,” he said.

He said the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein was “a blessing from God, and the U.S. was His tool."

An underfunded Iraqi relief agency (the Red Crescent is very similar to the Red Cross) donates a fifth of its entire annual budget to United States, and forcefully positions the donation as a way to say thanks for taking out Sadaam Hussein and his band of merry thugs. And then says they wish they could give more!

I wonder how the lefties would interpret this? Most likely, they’ll just ignore it. So far, a Technorati search yields no leftie blog comments (and not too much notice in general).

I can only see one way to view this: genuine, heartfelt gratitude on the part of a good number of Iraqis. Noble, indeed, my Iraqi friends…