Give Up Blog

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

How screwed up is Iraq?

Well, so screwed up that even KBR, the evil wing of Halliburton, is having trouble making money off of war. When the war profiteers are suffering, you know things are bad. Things are bad for women too, apparently the sex-slave trade is flourishing now that Saddam is gone. It used to be they just had to worry about Uday and Hussay. Now they've got a major underground white slave trade.

No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable government have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amuck. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed with red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked.

Ahh the incompetence. Now Bin Laden is saying we are on a crusade against the muslim world. Given that we're saber-rattling with regards to Iran, the guy may have a point. And does anyone else think that Bush and Bin Laden are BFF? They're a match made in heaven. Bin Laden wants to start a war between the West and the Muslim world that will bankrupt the great Satan and cost us lives, money, respect and credibility. Bush just played right into this guy's hands, and doesn't seem to show any signs of halting our progress towards fulfilling Osama's prophecy. Truly, a match made in heaven.

1 Comments:

minimalist said...

Of course, Bush's dwindling list of supporters will claim that KBR's failure proves that the war really wasn't a get-rich-quick scheme to pour public money into private coffers. The correct answer is, of course, what we always knew: that the Bush administration and its buddies are as incompetent at business as they are at politics. That they failed (once again) isn't a counterargument, it's proof of principle.

As for the sex-slavery trade, well, that's just Iraq's totally free market at work! There will be just as much slave-trading as the market will allow, and if it really is so immoral and abhorrent to humanity as you namby-pamby liberals say, then the market for it will dry up and become unprofitable! Problem solved!

(Recall the frightening article a while back that suggested Iraq was a trial balloon for a laissez-faire anything-goes capitalist "democracy", presumably to demonstrate why America needs even less business oversight. Well, we've seen how that's proceeding so far in Iraq, and here in America we can once again look forward to the numerous bank scandals, busts, and depressions that so characterized the so-called "Gilded Age".)

Finally, it's been pretty apparent for a while now that Bush and Osama have a symbiotic relationship going, not least because Bush hasn't been making nay apparent effort to find him. Osama gives Bush the boogedy-boogedy fear factor he needs to shore up his gullible base, and Bush is the embodiment of everything Osama rails against -- he is Osama's every dream come true. The difference is, Bush's followers are dwindling, but Bush's actions are only causing Osama's numbers to rise. Sleep well!

10:15 AM, April 25, 2006