"The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials." Semple in NY Times
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The NY Times quotes me here as saying that the NSC paper is "guessing." What I meant and they did not make this clear, is that the authors of the NSC paper are "guessing" about the number. While there is no doubt that the Sunni insurgent groups are "fully funded," the range of funding that they accept (70 to 200 million) means to me that the authors of the NSC paper have no real idea how large that number really is.
Pat Lang