King of Zembla: Little Ahmed Chalabi Will Go to Bed Hungry Tonight -- Unless You Help

Tell us where the $8.8 billion (did we say 8.8? Oops! Make that 9.8) went, and maybe we'll discuss it:

From the Indian Ocean tsunami to the church around the corner, Americans have shown time and again they are willing to open their pocketbooks for charity, for a total of about $250 billion last year alone.

But now, amid pleas for aid after Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration has launched an unusual effort to raise charitable contributions for another cause: the government's attempt to rebuild Iraq.

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."

Contributors have no way of knowing who's getting the money or precisely where it's headed, because the government says it must keep the details secret for security reasons.

But taxpayers already finance the projects the administration is seeking charitable donations for, such as providing water pumps for farmers. And officials say any contributions they receive will increase the scope of those efforts, rather than relieve existing taxpayer burdens.

Elsewhere on the charity beat: you may have missed the recent revelation that Pat Robertson's "Operation Blessing" -- the organization that was briefly listed just behind the Red Cross on FEMA's hurricane-relief website -- diverted half of its donations to another of Robertson's rackets, the Christian Broadcasting Network:

Bill Horan, the charity's president, at first denied his charity gave any money to Robertson's television operation.

"Well, that's an absolute, total and complete distortion of the truth," Horan said. "Operation Blessing does not give 1 red cent to CBN."

When he was told of the Operation Blessing documents obtained by ABC News, which show a contribution of $885,000 to CBN, Horan called it an accounting issue.