Tuesday, May 10, 2005

The Great Shock and Awe Swindle

Over at Body and Soul I read about something going on in Iraq that made me, jaded old me, spit my homebrewed beer all over my monitor in astonishment.
An official US audit has unearthed evidence of widespread corruption in postwar Iraq, finding that the occupying authorities failed to keep track of nearly 9 billion dollars (£4.8billion) of Iraq?s oil and other revenues.
9 billion dollars??? 9 billion dollars! That's enough to buy chicken mcnuggets for every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth!

Look, even I can admit that the war in Iraq could have been a big opportunity for the country to recover economically from the strain of years of sanctions. There could have been huge financial gain in rebuilding. The fact that there was even 9 billion dollars of revenue to "lose" impresses me (although that probably just means I know crap about economics...).

But this is just crap.

Isn't it bad enough that we gave all the choice contracts to non-Iraqi companies (okay, to Halliburton...)? But the revenue they did manage to make we lose and/or steal? Jeanne is right. This is why they hate us.

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