| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
30 Jun 2004 04:37:29 AM |
| Object: |
OT: City awash with tales of corruption and cronyism |
City awash with tales of corruption and cronyism
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=536623
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
30 June 2004
Soon after the fall of Baghdad last year, an Iraqi working for a US
organisation found that the private American security company under
contract to the Pentagon to protect him showed decreasing interest in
his safety. He discovered the reason was that his guards had become
arms dealers.
The Iraqi, a returned exile, was living in a house in the Green Zone,
the heavily fortified US headquarters in the centre of Baghdad. It was
formerly Saddam Hussein's headquarters. The security company guards
had discovered caches of valuable high-quality weapons abandoned by
his presidential guard. "They were taking the weapons and storing them
in our house before selling them," complained the returned exile.
"There were so many explosives there that I did not even dare smoke in
the house and I am a chain smoker." He and a companion took
photographs of the heaps of weaponry and later showed them to
officials in the Pentagon but they were not interested.
Patrick Cockburn
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=18510aff.0404100308.5c3e0f98%40posting.google.com
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