Are We Crazy?

U.S. To Lay Off 500,000 In Iraq
By Warren Vieth
Los Angeles Times
05 June, 2003

U.S. reconstruction officials will soon hand out pink slips to nearly half a million Iraqi military and civilian personnel, exacerbating an unemployment crisis that experts say could slow the pace of postwar reconstruction.

The layoffs will mean the loss of a government paycheck for roughly 1 in 10 Iraqi workers. The Bush administration hopes to soften the blow by making cash "termination payments" to members of Saddam Hussein's armed forces, Information Ministry employees and other government workers whose services are no longer wanted. The amount of the payments had not been announced.

Officials of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort acknowledged that the dismissal of so many people will magnify the economic misfortune of a country where a majority of the population depends on food rations; an estimated 30% of the labor force works for the government; and unemployment, as best anyone can tell, already exceeds 20%. The layoffs will be the latest blow to the once-thriving trading nation, already reduced to Third World subsistence levels by nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, international sanctions and intermittent war.

---

Yes, this is exactly what Iraq needs... more economic misfortune at the hands of the United States.

That's what's going to turn the whole insurgency thing around for us. First we invade on false pretences, then we destroy their infrastructure, then we start firing the few people who still have steady jobs left.

Hey jackasses, the last thing that country needs is more people with a grudge against us. Does the phrase 'disgruntled ex-employee" mean anything to you? If you thought that they were bad news in the Postal Service just think what they could do in a country awash in AK-47s and loose bombs stolen from unguarded military installations.

We would be smarter to do just the opposite. We should HIRE another 500,000 Iraqis --- no, make that 5 million --- and put them to work rebuilding their country, shuffling papers, any fucking thing. Just so long as they get a check that says "U.S. Government" every two weeks.

Employees don't kill their employers (often) and I'd rather have those Iraqis sniggering at Dilbert comic strips where they've written "Uncle Sam" underneath that boss with the pointy hairdo than driving into checkpoints wearing a napalm jockstrap.