AP: Pentagon helping restart Iraqi factories

[Eugene]

Posted on Thu, Jan. 04, 2007

Pentagon helping restart Iraqi factories
PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - As President Bush ponders how to salvage the Iraq military campaign,
business minds at the Pentagon are moving ahead with a part of the equation -
fighting Iraq's unemployment and trying to boost its economy.

Under a new program, the Defense Department is already helping reopen factories
that were owned by Saddam Hussein's government and abandoned by occupation
authorities shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The Pentagon may also start
providing them with contracts to support U.S. troops.

One factory restarted operations in the last two weeks, and nine more are to open
by the end of this month, adding some 11,000 Iraqis to employment rolls, a Pentagon
official said Wednesday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the
information had not been released yet.

-snip-

Reopening factories that produced everything from cement to buses for Saddam's
regime is among the ideas that have been discussed by Bush as he struggles to find
the way forward in Iraq after nearly four years of war.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/16379393.htm

[unhappycamper]

1. Wow! It only took them four fucking years to figure this out.

Did somebody over there wake up?

[magellan]

2. They are ridiculously clever, aren't they?

But I think it may be too late for this now. The factories and workers will likely be attacked, from within and without, just like the police stations and forces are.

The time for all of this great thinking was 4 years ago.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. You took the words

right out of my mouth.

[Tanuki]

3. Or maybe it's nothing more than part of the $20 million PR

disinformation campaign the Pentagon recently funded. Sorry, it has been a long time since I have believed anything this bunch of liars has put out in the press.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayne-lyn-stahl/20-million-more-for-the-_b_34515.html

"The next best thing to winning the lottery is being employed by the Lincoln Group, the public relations group in Washington, D.C. which is set to receive yet another two year $20 million contract from the Pentagon to "put together a unit of 12-18 communicators to support military PR efforts in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, as well as influence "the morale and support for the war in the United States." While Bush and Co.

........You may recall that LG was in the spotlight, last fall, when the Los Angeles Times revealed that the U.S. military was also "secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the mission in Iraq." Ostensibly, the role of the Lincoln Group was essentially as that of a liaison between the military and Iraqi newspapers; "company staff and subcontractors wrote and translated stories, then paid local editors varying amounts to run them, pretending to be freelance reporters, for example, or advertising executives." (Media Transparency)

Back in 2004, when Iraqex, precursor to the Lincoln Group, was originally given $5 million by the military to provide communications services to Iraq, the New York Times reported, a year later, that fact that Iraqex was awarded a contract was "something of a mystery" given that the two founders "had no background in public relations or the media." (Media Transparency)
...."

[Missy M]

5. The factories owned by the Saddam Hussein government will now be owned...

by our government. The Pentagon may start providing them with contracts to support US troops, sounds like outsourcing to me.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. Read "Imperial Life in the Emerald City"

The CPA already tried this. It was a clusterfuck. Most of the factories produced horribly subpar goods which couldn't be sold, now that trade with Iraq is allowed and good products are available. The factories also employed thousands more people than were actually necessary. A lot of the management were Baathists, and the workers wanted rid of them, but they were the ones who knew how to run things.

This is utterly destined to fail.

[atreides1]

7. So????

Do you think the Pentagon can reopen some of the factories here in the U.S., or does this largesse
only apply to countries that we all but destroy?