Mystery Surrounds Dead U.S. Contractor

[Judi Lynn]

Mystery Surrounds Dead U.S. Contractor
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer

January 28, 2006, 12:19 PM EST

There are fortunes to be made in Iraq, where seemingly everything is broken or looted or blown up. The fortunes come from fixing those things; there is no shortage of cash to hire the fixers.

Often they are characters writ large with bravado and cunning and greed, sprouting like weeds amid the rubble.

Dale Stoffel was all of that. He devised elaborate schemes to get Iraqi government contracts to repair an unending list of things that no longer worked. He posed for photographs in the desert wearing a flak vest and toting an M5 submachine gun. He clinched a cigar between his teeth.

He pushed those schemes until they became reality. He signed huge contracts with the interim Iraqi Defense Ministry -- the biggest of which was to repair the country's broken-down arsenal of tanks, helicopters and jets.

Yet Stoffel had expectations that seemed naively arrogant for a man of the world.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-dead-in-iraq,0,4851238.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[benburch]

1. Anybody who willingly aids or abets this war is a war criminal. nt

[High Plains]

2. One dead wannabe war profiteer.

Tough shit.

[leftchick]

3. oooh I get it, he is a Dead War Profiteer

no mystery there. And no tears.

[High Plains]

7. Yep n/t

[Ben Ceremos]

8. War-profiteers and mercenaries

deserve the epithet "scum of the earth". They are terrorists. They use the war as a means to live while war is the death of all the innocent who gain nothing from the war. He remains a human, and a tragic figure at that, but I wouldn't spill any tears for his "sort". As they once said in the long gone age of personal responsibility, "He got what he asked for"...

[acmavm]

4. Got no pity for the guy, none at all. He went in looking to make some big

money off the Iraqis and their tragic situation. He got took by people who have a few thousand years more experience in deals like this than us Westerners have.

When we were in mud huts and caves eating berries and clubbing anything that moved, the Middle East and the Mediterranean had pretty complex and sophisticated societies going on.

That's why we will never win. We can't win. This is just another day for them. Conquest and occupation has been done, and has failed, for millenia.

[Army]

12. You Got That Right

Please stand up, Slim Shady.

You have hit it. One Iraqi translator smiled amusingly at us one day and said words to the effect of "you come and go, we will stay here. We will run our society our way."

[acmavm]

22. Ahhhh! Do I detect the response of a man/woman who could tell some

tales about the real Iraq and its people? You definitely interest me since you have come into contact with the real deal, whereas we live vicariously through the words and writings of people who were there.

Do they look down their noses on us while knowing all the while that they can wait us out? Fight as long as it takes (unless we go nuclear on their asses)? That we are in a part of the world that doesn't belong to us, is far far away from home, and really thinks of us as ignorant barbarians.

See, I don't think its really a religious matter, to me it seems like power and money. Am I wrong?

[Army]

27. Hit it on the Head

Of course it's about money and power. These folks want us out.

We were on a convoy one day and had a translator with us. The people were all smiling and waving while saying...well, something. Probably "thanks for all this democracy," right?

Not quite. I told the translator "These folks LOVE us!" He laughed and said "Not so fast, my friend. They were telling you to go home."

[chat_noir]

5. "He warned about the consequences if the money was not recovered."

"News of it will be on the front page under the photos of President Bush, Rumsfeld, me" and Petraeus' task force, Stoffel wrote to another military officer in early December. "Jobs will be lost and congressional hearings will be held."

In response to Stoffel's complaints, U.S. military officials informed Zayna about the accusations of corruption, according to several people familiar with the matter. British Brig. Gen. David Clements summoned all the parties to a Dec. 5 meeting in Iraq. Afterward, Clements ordered Zayna to release the money to Stoffel, sources familiar with the meeting said.

As of Dec. 8, Stoffel still had not received the money. That day, after he left the Taji military base outside Baghdad, his SUV was rammed by another vehicle. Stoffel and a business associate, Joseph Wemple, were cut down in a hail of bullets, their bodies left at the scene.


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11962


much, more at the above link

[Judi Lynn]

11. Great article! It mentions he had a meeting with an undersecretary of

defense. He was getting very deeply involved with some strange stuff.

Found this interesting photo:



Shortly after defense contractors Dale Stoffel and Joe Wemple were murdered in Iraq last December, a video was released by an unknown Iraqi terror group, Brigades of the Islamic Jihad.

Now a second video has been released by yet another unknown terror organization, Rafidan —The Political Commitee of the Mujahideen Central Command. (Actually, there are two videos, the second being a kind of supplement to the first and narrated by the same individual.)

In this new release, the "jihadi" reading the text and some of the images displayed are different from those of the Brigades video; a fair number are the same, however, suggesting that the makers of the second tape had access to the stash of captured documents used in the first video. The jihadi in the new videos is very odd-looking: he has a bodybuilder's physique and is sporting what appears to be a "golfer's tan." (See photo above.) Unlike the jihadis in the original Brigades video, this one isn't very convincingly Middle Eastern.
(snip/...)

http://writingcompany.blogs.com/this_isnt_writing_its_typ/2005/04/yet_another_sto.html



From your L.A. Times/Common Dreams article, concerning this same group:

The attackers stole Stoffel's computer from the scene. About a week later, a video showing photographs and identity documents of Stoffel and Wemple was posted on a website frequently used by insurgent groups. A group calling itself the Brigades of the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the killings. The group was not previously known to terrorism experts.

The timing and the unusual details of the killings have raised suspicions in the U.S. and Iraq that the video was a ruse to disguise an assassination.

"The video was very unusual," said Evan Kohlman, a terrorism consultant who examined the video.

"It didn't show bodies or the killing, but only photos, documents and materials taken from the bodies. It is certainly possible that someone manufactured the video."
(snip/...)

[IndianaGreen]

13. Looks like a Westener sporting a tan

the white skin in his arm is clearly visible in the photograph. What's going on in here?

[Judi Lynn]

14. No kidding! He couldn't look more American. n/t

[truth2power]

23. Nice catch, IG! Wonder how they'd spin that, hmm? n/t

[brentspeak]

18. Sounds like he may have rediscovered some ethics within himself

before he was offed; he wanted the Bush cartel investigated. Of course, it took Stoffel getting cheated out of his ill-gotten gains to become sufficiently outraged.

[boobooday]

6. This does look like a mighty tangled web

Santorum, Chalabi . . . missing money.

Strange.

Beyond that, isn't it nice how we are supposedly bringing democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people, and instead we bring a swarm of capitalist vultures all salivating over the prospects of making a fortune from their suffering.

[leftchick]

9. This is an excellent article exposing just how they rip off US Taxpayers

It is also obvious who offed the complaining american war profiteer so why the hell is the FBI still investigating?

<snip>

The May 2005 findings were breathtaking. Widespread fraud under Shaalan had resulted in the disappearance of virtually the entire $1.3 billion procurement budget. The report, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, examined 89 contracts and found that all had been paid in full, via cash bank transfers, in advance of any work being done.

All were awarded to Iraqis acting as intermediaries like Stoffel's contact, Zayna, and not to the suppliers themselves.

The finance minister called it "possibly one of the greatest thefts" in Iraqi history.

The Wye Oak-CLI contract was one of the most glaring examples. Nearly $25 million had been deposited by Zayna in a Lebanese bank "contrary to general contracting provisions," the audit said.

In October, 27 arrest warrants were issued for Defense Ministry officials, including Shaalan and Cattan. But by then, Shaalan had immunity from prosecution as a member of parliament.

He'd also left the country. He now lives in Britain and denies wrongdoing, though he acknowledges transferring $500 million in ministry funds to a Lebanese bank -- to buy armored vehicles, he said.

<snip>
As for Zayna, the last thing Bob Irey heard was the middleman remains in Iraq. He continues to bill the Defense Ministry for work done under the Taji contract.

[KoKo]

10. Curious...and the photos of him with Bush and Chalabi, that keep getting

posted. That and Santorum's office releasing correspondence about this.

I couldn't quite get where the article was going...but those to points stuck in my mind. What group could want pictures of Stoffel connected to Bush and Chalabi?

[drm604]

15. A lot of people seem to think he was CIA.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Dale+Stoffel

I don't know if there's any truth to it.

[0007]

19. I think I fit in that group of folks that think along those lines.

[bigworld]

20. CIA?

I think a lot of these guys like to make people think they're CIA.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. The Gambler came up snake-eyes.

Mystery solved.

Perhaps Karma is uncomfortable with building fortunes on the backs of innocents.

[0007]

21. Ace duce, crapped out!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

25. Where's the croupier when you need him?

[brentspeak]

17. We're to believe that the entire $1.3 billion went to corrupt Iraqis?

I'm sure some of the money did, but quite a bit probably made their way into corrupt Western (including American) pockets. Saying that all the money was taken by Iraqis or the shady Lebanese middleman makes great cover for some American businessmen who don't want the public to find out about all the money they made in Iraq.

[pinniped]

24. Look!...the 'real' reason for the entire BS war:

--There are fortunes to be made in Iraq, where seemingly everything is broken or looted or blown up--

Too bad about the dead merc. I'm sure the nice and friendly people of Iraq were of paramount importance to him. The cash was a mere bonus.

[teryang]

26. So much for Iraqization of the war n/t