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Iraq: Not a Country Anymore

"Think about contractors in Iraq, and what's the first thing that comes to mind? Halliburton, raking in billions and overcharging taxpayers by billing the government for stuff it never delivered, and then getting bonuses for almost all its questionable charges? The Lincoln Group, paying Iraqi journalists to plant "good news" stories in the press? The Pentagon's private army of outsourced "security specialists," like Blackwater and Custer Battles, the mercenaries whose greed and shameful tactics make the CIA look like choirboys?

You'd be right. And wrong.

Wrong because what you probably don't know is that these miscreants are not the only contractors there. There is also a not-nearly-large-enough cadre of contractors who don't make millions."

Most of them work for USAID - the much-maligned US Agency for International Development. They are both Americans and Iraqis - Shia, Sunni, Kurd. And they work side by side every day, in an environment of chaos, fear and violence, risking their lives trying to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis."

So writes William Fisher in truthout.com. More interesting, and to make one despair, is the email Fisher reproduces from a USAID officer, including this statement - "The most common words are death, kidnapping, injury and danger. Iraq, especially Baghdad, is not a country any more. It is hell."

It's no exaggeration that the whole situation in Iraq is a hopeless mess. Read the complete email from someone "on the ground" and not hiding behind a desk in Washington, London or Canberra.

If you want confirmation of the above, this time from an Iraqi, of what is happening, in Baghdad, as of 28 March, go to Baghdad Burning [the blogger there] here.

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