Looters drive off with office buildings

[DoYouEverWonder]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641716180.html

May 29, 2004


As the United States spends billions of dollars rebuilding Iraq's civil and military infrastructure, evidence of widespread looting is mounting. Brand new components for oil rigs and water plants, military equipment and even entire buildings are leaving the country on the backs of trucks.

In one operation, at least 100 semi-trailers loaded with what is billed as scrap metal are streaming each day into Jordan, one of six countries bordering Iraq.

In the past several months, the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, has been closely monitoring satellite photographs of hundreds of military-industrial sites in Iraq.

Initial results from the analysis are disturbing, said Jacques Baute, director of the agency's Iraq nuclear verification office: entire buildings and complexes consisting of as many as a dozen buildings have been vanishing from the photographs.

"We see sites that have totally been cleaned out," Dr Baute said.



Well now we know were some of those billions of US taxpayer money is going. Seems we're not rebuilding Iraq, deconstructing it sounds more like it.

[burrowowl]

1. Is Haliburton going to sell

it back at twice the price?

[rocktivity]

2. Where are the gunships and fighting vehicles when they're REALLY needed?

We can blow up farmers and other civilians. Why aren't these convoys be stopped at the Jordan border--a Halliburton double billing scheme, perhaps?

:headbang:
rocknation

[teryang]

3. corruption is a many splendored thing

As one expert on corruption pointed out recently, it is organic and "they make it up as they go along."

[PartyPooper]

4. I thought they stopped the looting after they pilfered the museums.

I thought wrong.

:-(

[fizzana]

5. This is the biggest fencing operation in the history of mankind,

$197 billion and growing.

[fizzana]

6. It amazes me that even though the occupation is so chaotic

the miilitary and the CPA have no fucking idea what is going on under their noses.

"The US contends the trade is closely monitored by Iraqi government ministries to ensure nothing crossing the border poses a security risk or siphons material from new projects.

In April, Paul Bremer, the US occupation's senior official in Iraq, and the Iraqi Ministry of Trade established rules for licensing the export of scrap metal."

NPR's Marketplace did a whole expose on how everything coming into the various ministries was being sold off openly in stores on Baghdad's main streets as well as everywhere else.