  Go ahead, try it...you know you want to. Search for "buy dinars" on Google (or something else if, for some bizarre reason, you don't use Google). Alternatively you can just click the title of this post. That'll get you there as well. Once you get there, check out the sponsored links.
What you'll find is a plethora of web sites selling various amounts and denominations of the new Iraqi dinar. The country replaced all the denominations of the old Saddam-spangled currency in favor of these new bills in October 2003. Since then, selling the bills has become a booming business. Not unlike the business model I've seen in other developing contries where shop after shop lining the road sells the exact same items at the exact same price, these sites pretty much all have the same pitch and product. From investindinar.com and buyiraqidinar.com to dinarsales.com and silverdinar.com, you can get roughly one million dinars for about one thousand good 'ol American dollars, putting the exchange rate at about 1/10 of a penny per dinar. And the pitch is basically that this is a great investment opportunity. The exchange rate before the first Gulf War would give you over $3 for every dinar.
After the first war, you could get $.33 for every dinar. And now its $.001. If you were to invest, and if it went up to even just a penny, you will have achieved a ten-fold increase in value, and Irag has the second-largest oil reserve in the world, and all these other natural resources, etc, etc, so on and so forth. That's just the background. I'm not here to pitch this or to give any kind of investment advice. There are also plenty of sites out there that will tell you that it's a really risky investment and all the reasons why it may not pay off like one might expect. But I'd like to know if anyone else has a not-so-right feeling about the thousands (and that's probably a conservative estimate) of Americans that are investing in the Iraqi Dinar. I'm not against anyone buying dinars should they decide that it is an investment that fits in their portfolio.
It is just sad to think that, though we have done so much damage over there, people will only give aid in the form of an investment, one that they expect to reap large gains from. I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around what the actual feeling is, but I can't help think about the age-old paradigm of the rich exploiting the poor masses.
It's even worse when I hear that some subsidiary of Halliburton is buying up dinars. Now, you can say what you want about the risks involved with the investment, but these guys don't mess around with money. Furthermore, they've got a say in how well the rebuilding of Iraq goes. Seems to me, their optimistic. But the disturbing thing is how well these guys know how to make money and the way they can use the world to do it. You go in, start a war and devalue a country's currency so much it's ridiculous. Then you send your own people in to rebuild it, making money off the American taxpayers as well as others around the world. All the while, you buy up the extremely devalued currency . Then you see to it that the country gets rebuilt and make a hefty sum in the process. It is truly impressive how good they are at making money...as long as you don't have any problems with pesky morality. I know the average joe didn't have much to do directly with the decision to bring war to Iraq and they just see an opportunity to make some money if they can risk it. The average joe probably doesn't even fully grasp why this opportunity is available to him. the average joe probably just thinks,"man, this country is poor, but people tell me I can make money if they become even a little less poor". Ah, but the ignorance of Americans to the world around them is another discussion for another day.
With that said, partly because I am optimistic (or maybe it's just hopeful), partly because the guys in the know are, well, in the know, and partly for kicks, I think I might see if buying some dinars is for me. Regardless, I truly hope Iraq and it's people will be able to prosper. 
