NYT: Iraqi Oil Smugglers Finance Fighting--Up to $4 billion!

Oil Smuggler Trucks Confiscated at Basra

Along with the leaked cable on how bad things are getting in Iraq, things are goinbg downhill rapidly in the South of Iraq. Oil smuggling has now reached as much as $4 billion a year, fueling the civil war with $$$.

Basra now has to be won back from Sadr and other militias, the Sunnis have all been ethnically cleansed from Basra, the Brits are planning a big offensive to take back the town from the corrupted police force, while both Shia militias and Sunni insurgents easily fund themselves with up to $4 billion in oil smuggling revenue to buy weapons and ammunition.

Our troops are pinned down at their bases and only foray out to sweep and terrorize neighborhoods and towns, while Bush has no plans to ever let them withdraw and leave all that Iraqi oil to the terrorists.

We cannot win this war--at least not without a hell of a lot more troops, General Shineseki said several hundred thousand before the invasion and he was right.

From the NY Times:

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In many cases documented by Alak and other Iraqi officials, truckers — often collaborating with the gangs — pay bribes or use forged papers to cross Iraqi borders at will, tamper with their fuel meters to inflate the value of their load or simply turn their loads over to smuggling gangs.

As a result, as much as 30 percent of imported gasoline ends up in the hands of smugglers, who promptly resell the gasoline abroad, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The shortfall is part of what forces Iraqi families to spend more on fuel from the black market, where it is far more expensive.

...Oil Ministry data suggest that the total was $2.5 billion to $4 billion in 2005, said Yahia Said, a research fellow at the London School of Economics and director of the Iraq Revenue Watch at the Open Society Institute.

Even at the low end, that would mean smuggling costs account for almost 10 percent of Iraq's gross domestic product, $29.3 billion in 2005.

http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060604/NEWS/606040349/1002/EDUCATION05

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We are fighting an enemy getting help from al-Queda, the Saudis, the Iranians AND now billions in oil smuggling. Bush has put our troops in a hopeless situation.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO RECOMMEND FOR GREATEST IF YOU WANT THE TRUTH ABOUT THE OIL SMUGGLING AND BASRA TO GET OUT THERE. THE WAR IS GETTING WORSE, NOT BETTER.

They need to make sure they have a well equipped insurgency, so that more US Troops can die for no good reason.

neo-cons can swing it.