GAO: Iraq rakes in billions in oil profits while the United States pays for reconstruction

Crossposted from our new home blog,They gave us a republic...

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The dramatic increase in oil prices has positioned Iraq, which sits atop the third largest oil reserve in the world, to begin to bear some of the burden of reconstruction of that war-torn country, decimated by more than two decades of war and sanctions.

In a GAO report released yesterday, the government watchdog was deliberate in avoiding assignation of who-should-pay-for-what and thus the politics of the matter. Instead, they did what they do best and stuck to facts and figures - but in so doing, the report leaves little doubt that Iraq can afford to pony over a bit more dough for its own reconstruction. Iraq took in just under $33 Billion in oil revenues in the first six months of 2008, and is on pace to rake in between $67 and $79 Billion this year, meaning Iraq could see a budget surplus of between $38.2 billion and $50.3 billion this year alone. The GAO estimates that this years oil revenues will be double the average annual oil revenues that were realized from 2005 through 2007. The GAO based their projections for the second half of the year on actual sales through the first half, and assumed an average export price from $96.88 to $125.29 per barrel and oil export volumes of 1.89 to 2.01 million barrels per day.


As oil prices settle down at around $125 per barrel, after exceeding $140 just a few weeks ago, Iraq could post a budget surplus of between $33 billion and $50 billion this year. This windfall comes in spite of the fact that Iraq has yet to approach pre-invasion oil-production levels.

Between 2005 and 2007, the government of Iraq spent approximately $67 billion on government operations and investments in the greater society. About 90% was spent on operations, and 10% was invested in structures and durable goods. A mere one percent was spent on maintaining the country. Instead the United States has been footing that bill. Buildings, infrastructure for the delivery of water and electricity, and weapons for the countries police and security forces.

Even as total expenditures grew from 2005 through 2007, the country was unable to spend all of the budgeted funds. For example - last year, 2007, Iraq spent 80% of ths $28 billion operating budget and 28% of its investment budget. GAO estimates that in 2008, Iraq will spend less than $40 billion of its nearly $50 billion budget.

At the end of 2007, the Iraqi government had financial deposits of $29.4 billion, held in the Development Fund for Iraq and other deposits made in the name of the central government in the Central Bank of Iraq and Iraq’s commercial banks. This balance is due to budget surpluses of about $29 billion between 2005 and 2007.



And then there are the American numbers.

Since FY 2003, when the U.S. appropriated approximately $48 billion for stabilization and reconstruction efforts of post-invasion Iraq. As of June 2008, about $42 billion of that amount had been obligated. Of that $42 billion, the United States has spent more than $23 billion on security and critical infrastructure, such as water, electricity and oil. Compare that expenditure with the $3.9 billion spent in these sectors by Iraq between 2005 and April of this year.

Now there are multiple reasons why the Iraqi government has been unable to invest more of its money on capital improvements, and some of those shortcomings were created by the United States and our coalition allies when civil servants were summarily fired by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and barred from public service for being members of the Bath Party (a requirement for government employment) under the Saddam Hussein regime. When the people who know how to work the levers are not allowed to touch the machine, it doesn't work.

De-bathification was a factor in several areas of shortfall, from operations to procurement and budgeting. De-bathification coupled with sectarian violence and the "brain drain" that resulted from the middle class fleeing the country made government operations in Iraq ineffectual at best. These factors converged and conspired to make it necessary for the United States to fund activities of key ministries to even get the country on a footing where it could begin to execute it's own budget priorities.

Now let me be clear that it is not my intent to debate who should be paying for the reconstruction. If I had my druthers we would be able to unring the bell, unselect George Bush, uninvade Iraq and unhang Saddam Hussein. But as none of that is possible, we have to look at the situation at hand and make realistic assessments. And reality dictates that the United States can not keep up the level of spending we have been engaged in in Iraq. Certainly not with all the problems we face at home.

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Money, not Ideology or Nationalism, Drives the Iraq Insurgency

This post grew out of research for the previous post about contractor fraud in Iraq committed by Parsons, a Halliburton-type construction company that left unfinished projects all over Iraq. The money that was pumped into companies like Parsons was paid out to people who didn't do the work--and I suspect that they took that money and used it to pay for attacks on Americans and Iraqi security forces in order to create the kind of chaos that would keep people from noticing they weren't doing what they were hired to do.

If ten thousand dollars was paid to someone to show up and pour concrete at a construction site, what would stop them from taking a hundred dollars to pay someone to place an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) near the site to create the impression that security was lacking? That could then be the reason why the work wasn't done on time, or even if at all. Has this been repeated all across Iraq? It's certainly possible, perhaps on a larger scale.

This leads me to believe that the terrorists who oppose us in Iraq are not necessarily driven by nationalism or Islamic fundamentalism. Not enough attention has been paid to the idea that money is largely what created, funded and sustained the Iraqi insurgency as it began to form. The smuggling of oil has played a key part in funneling money to the insurgency:

Oil smuggling is believed to be occurring in three different ways in Iraq:

1. Iraqi crude. At ABOT, officials at Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company (SOC) that extracts the crude, and at the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) that pipes the crude to the terminals, would have to know about smuggling, even if they were not benefiting from the scheme.

Buyers from Brazil to India, from Thailand to the United States, purchase crude from Iraq at ABOT. The tanker operators would also have to be part of smuggling schemes. They would sign receipts for a lower quantity than they actually receive, and pay the extra directly to the smugglers. The most likely collaborators are either Iraqi or U.S. officials who supervise the production and delivery. Or both.

2. Imported fuel. Iraq spends a small fortune to buy fuel from neighboring countries including Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Much of this fuel goes to local drivers at a subsidized rate, and constitutes possibly the single most expensive item in the national budget after government salaries. In 2005 Iraq spent $4.2 billion of its $24.2 billion gross domestic product (GDP) on imported oil; the bill for 2006 is expected to exceed $5 billion. Smugglers siphon off a significant amount of the government subsidized fuel to sell back overseas at full price: The Ministry of Oil estimates the value at $800 million.

3. Theft of locally-produced gasoline. Iraqi gasoline is stolen from refineries or illegal taps on pipelines and resold within the country or smuggled abroad. Another $800 million worth of black market fuels is sold within Iraq, in places from Penjwin in the far north, to Abu al-Khasib in the south.

The U.S. military believes that the money from these operations funds insurgent operations, although evidence suggests that some also goes to straightforward petty corruption.

In mid-March 2007, the U.S. military launched "Operation Honest Hands" which brought the Beiji refinery under control of the 82nd Airborne Division. The U.S. government paid to install video cameras, digital weighing machines for the trucks, and "sophisticated data-sifting methods" to identify senior Iraqi officials with ties to black-market oil rings, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Two senior officials have been arrested so far: Ibrahim Muslit, who ran the Beiji refinery's oil-distribution operation and allegedly allowed 33 tankers in a single day to receive fuel without any paperwork. Ahmed Ibrahim Hamad, a senior transportation official at the refinery who allegedly tried to help smuggle out seven tankers of heavy fuel oil.

Petty corruption also can be read as "organized crime," and when the Saddam government collapsed, organized crime sprouted up overnight. Imports of cars, satellite dishes, and cellular telephones also funneled money into organized crime groups that trafficked in these items.

War is good for business, and in Iraq, business was booming from the minute that the common enemy--US occupation troops--were seen to be convenient targets to keep the graft and corruption under wraps. If the nascent Iraqi government was off-balance, and if the Americans were focused on keeping themselves alive, then organized crime could expand and grow. From 2003 until today, organized crime has been the most ignored aspect of Iraqi society. We have never paid enough attention to how endemic it is, how far into the Iraqi government ministries it reaches, and how it has used oil smuggling and other sources of income to pay people to attack the Iraqi government forces and US troops.

We do know this--when the US government tried to install meters to see how much oil was being stolen, the Iraqi government essentially resisted, then killed, the project. Attempts to restart the program, involving a US government company called Parsons, involved some questionable practices. Today, the smuggling of oil could be financing just about anything in Iraq and we would have no way of knowing how much is being stolen.

In mid-September 2006, the Iraqi oil ministry abruptly announced that it would pull the plug on the oil metering project, making future monitoring even less certain.

Asim Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman, told Al Hayat: "The American company had failed in keeping its promise to finish installing these meters; also, refusing to reveal the exact cost, except for saying that it is executing it within the American grant to Iraq and the sum of that grant is unknown to us too. This relieves the ministry from its obligation to it. Besides, many international companies presented good offers to implement the project in a record time due to its importance."

The oil ministry then invited British Petroleum and Shell to plan a comprehensive national metering project that would cover not only the oil terminals, but also the productions wells and the even the refineries.

A SIGIR team traveled to ABOT in November 2006 to check on progress. Its unpublished report suggests that the work was less than half complete.

Suddenly, in December 2006, a high-level U.S. team traveled out to ABOT to inspect the meters. In a little-noticed announcement issued on a Saturday just before Christmas, John Sickman, the resident oil expert at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said the meters had been fixed and were working fine.

"The measurement using the existing turbine meters and displacement meters at the offshore terminal at ABOT is transparent and the measurement devices are more than adequate," Sickman was quoted in the press release. "Furthermore, the crude oil vessels have measurement and quality samplers."

Indeed this is how the Dutch company Saybolt measured oil export under the United Nations Oil for Food program. The problem even today, according to experts consulted by CorpWatch, is that the meters have yet to be calibrated, so the data are basically useless.

Even if the meters are working properly, smuggling could still occur. "It's easy to steal crude if you knew what you were doing," Don Deaver, a petroleum metering expert who worked for Exxon for 33 years, told CorpWatch. "If you measure too low or too high, someone will lose and some will one gain. It's why you need professionals who understand how the meters work to make sure that nothing is being lost or stolen."

U.S. government officials claim that little is being stolen. SGS (a British consultancy) "is providing independent third party loading certifications onsite for the customers. This, coupled with the recent installation of ultrasonic meter provides more than redundant measurement capability," said Sickman in December.

Days after the press release, in early January 2007, Parsons began work on the meters under a $57.8 million U.S. government-funded contract supervised by Major Dale Winger of the Joint Contracting Command in Basra. Almost as soon as work started, Winger was replaced by Lieutenant Commander Brian Schorn. When CorpWatch reached Schorn, he said he was not up to speed on what work had been done, and referred questions to his "front-office" in Baghdad at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Parsons Iraq Joint Venture spokesman Don Lassus also refused to comment to CorpWatch. The contract with the military does not permit the release of "any unclassified information," he said, without prior approval of the military.

Today [this article was written in early 2007] no government officials have been able to establish conclusively whether oil is being smuggled or not. Even the future of the oil metering remains unclear. The latest report issued by SIGIR in January 2007 notes that repair and rehabilitation work at ABOT is scheduled to be finished by May 2007, but "it is unclear whether this project will be completed because of de-obligation requirements" that is to say that the funding could be cut.

Will we see another Basra offensive? The March, 2008 assault into the southern city of Basra exposed the weakness of the Iraqi government when it comes to battling oil smuggling.

In interviews, senior advisers to [Nouri al-] Maliki and [Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim insisted that the Basra offensive was intended to combat criminal gangs and oil smugglers. Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior Supreme Council official, said the government had not targeted Sadr.

I believe that this has been overlooked--Iraq has a serious problem with criminal activity, organized crime, and smuggling. When it is in the interest of these elements to attack Americans, destabilize the security situation, and expand their control of key areas, they can move largely unchecked.

Parsons Fails in Iraq, But Keeps Lucrative Government Contracts?

One of the things you can do when a company fails to fulfill their obligations in Iraq--and screws the US taxpayer--is to look at just how many other possible government contracts they still have in other areas. Why should a defense contractor get away with not building a prison in Iraq but still keep contracts to provide workers for the US government in the United States?

I'm sure there are all kinds of high-minded reasons why I'm totally wrong, but here goes: Parsons of California screwed the taxpayers big time in Iraq:

The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general's office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons's work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million.

"Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned," the inspector general wrote. "Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract." Auditors did not give a dollar figure of how much had potentially been wasted, but they said Parsons got about 10 percent -- or $11.3 million -- of the $108 million of award fees it could have received.

Parsons said in a written statement yesterday that it had "some serious reservations about the conclusions" in the audits, saying the company was hindered by the violent and unstable security situation in Iraq. One of Parsons's subcontractors was shot and killed at close range while in his office, the company said.

Therein lies the real problem--Parsons is merely stealing your money because it can. And while it is stealing your money, it's getting an award for doing a great job as it lies about the progress it is making so that it can claim awards it does not deserve.

And while all of that is going on, your government basically takes the coal shovel, and shovels the money at them while no one is watching over the contracts:

The office, which is charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse in U.S. spending, said a contract of Parsons's size should have had 50 to 60 contracting officers and specialists working on it, but it only had 10.

Parsons won its lucrative deal in 2004 to do security and justice work in Iraq, as part of a dozen other big reconstruction deals. Of 53 construction projects in the Parsons contract, only 18 were completed.

Auditors gave Parsons a scathing report on one of its biggest projects -- a multimillion-dollar prison in Diyala that was to house 1,800 inmates and help alleviate overcrowded facilities -- calling it a failure and wasteful. The U.S. government fired Parsons from the prison contract two years ago, saying it was late and over budget. It paid Parsons $31 million, and then paid other contractors $9 million to keep working on the project.

If Parsons was fired from that contract two years ago, take a look at this story from last year--another project to help restore the oil exporting infrastructure in Iraq details how Halliburton and Parsons have failed to meet deadlines:

Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring [Spring, 2007] that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.

You'd think the gravy train was over for Parsons. You'd think they wouldn't have the gall to keep trying to get more government contracts and fill contractor positions at various US government sites. You'd think there would be great concern as to granting Parsons any more work. But, no worries! If you want to work on a government contract for Parsons, there's no shortage of existing government contract work waiting for you. Parsons has scores of current listings, all throughout the continental United States and throughout the world, looking for people to fill positions on key government contracts.

I believe there should be some sort of law or some sort of regulation that ties what a company does in Iraq to what they do in the United States or in other regions. If a company blows it in Iraq and fails to meet its obligations there, then that company should have its other contracting work for the government held, called into question, or audited for similar cost overruns or practices. Some companies may claim that what their international division does is separate from what their domestic division does--I think that's a sham in order to stovepipe things and keep the money flowing to one part of their business while they use another part of their business to rip off the taxpayers.

And, as if this needs to be added, Parsons should not be awarded any more government contracts until it rectifies the problems with the existing or previous contracts.

Everything Stupid Revolves Around Golf

...or maybe not. But when you look at the plans for the Green Zone in Iraq, one gets the sense that there is an overemphasis on "golf" and an underemphasis on "roads, sewage, and electricity."

A $5 [billion]tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.

The US military released the first tentative artists' impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks. "This is at the end of the day an Iraqi-owned area and we will give it back to them with added value," said the source, who requested anonymity.

Really? We're going to just "give it back to them?" What if they decide they want to tear everything down and replace it with bombed out buildings, canals running full of raw sewage or a dumping grounds for executed militiamen? Will we say no?

Potential investors are being encouraged to take a punt that years ahead, Baghdad's fortunes may mirror former war-torn cities such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have risen from the ashes.

Marriott International has already signed a deal to build a hotel in the Green Zone, according to Navy Captain Thomas Karnowski, the chief US liaison. Also in the pipeline is a possible $1bn investment from MBI International, a hotel and resorts specialist led by Saudi sheikh, Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

One Los Angeles-based firm, C3, has said it wants to build an amusement park on the Green Zone's outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.

American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarising an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year.

How's that going, by the way? Pretty good, I hear.

"When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbours are. You want to influence what happens in your neighbourhood over time," Karnowski told Associated Press.

He acknowledged that any project would face formidable difficulties: "There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by."

There is also the not insignificant matter of the dire security situation. Shia militants under attack from US and Iraqi forces elsewhere in the capital have been launching volleys of rockets on the Green Zone for much of the last month.

Despite the apparent Pentagon enthusiasm, other US officials in Baghdad seemed more sceptical. "We approach this with perhaps a dose of realism," offered one. "These are issues for the Iraqis to discuss. We do not own the International Zone, and its future is really up to the Iraqis."

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. "What do I care?" shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. "I don't have electricity, I don't have fresh water and I don't have a job.

Don't like to play golf in a war zone? Too bad, moonbats! We're going to be there for a hundred years! Better get used to it. And the only way we're going to help Ahmed Hussein find a job and live a life of luxury is to put up a multi-billion dollar resort designed to appeal to craven, fat white men who like to play golf. What will then happen is that Ahmed can get a job fishing golf balls out of the Tigris for a dollar per thousand. If it can work in this country, it can work anywhere, right?

This Hand Doesn't Know What The Other Is Doing

h/t to reader and commenter "vstol" for catching this...

Do any of these people know what the hell they're talking about?

First, we heard this:

A top Iraqi official said Sunday there was no "conclusive" evidence that Shiite extremists have been directly supplied with some Iranian arms as alleged by the United States.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Iraq does not want trouble with any country, "especially Iran."

Al-Dabbagh was commenting on talks this week in Tehran between an Iraqi delegation and Iranian authorities aimed at halting suspected Iranian aid to some Shiite militias.

Then, we heard this:

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called reporters late Sunday night to clarify remarks he made at a news conference earlier in the day, when he appeared to say that there was no hard evidence that Iran was allowing weapons to come into Iraq. Dabbagh said his comments had been misinterpreted.

"There is an interference and evidence that they have interfered in Iraqi affairs," Dabbagh said in an interview arranged by a U.S. official. When asked how he would characterize the proof that Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq, he said: "It is a concrete evidence."

The U.S. government has long accused Iran of providing the powerful roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators to Shiite militiamen who attack American troops. Iran has denied any such role. [these are the copper bowl-shaped devices, which are crude and can be made literally anywhere and not just in Iran]

Dabbagh said that after Maliki launched an offensive last month in the southern city of Basra, weapons were found that were clearly produced in Iran.

"The truth came out; there is evidence of Iranian weapons in Iraq," he said. "Now we need to document who sent them."

Dabbagh said the high-level committee was formed three days ago and includes officials from the Interior and Defense Ministries.

So which is it then? No concrete proof or so much proof as to provoke all-out war between Iraq and Iran? Why does he use the metaphor of "concrete" when everyone knows that cheap concrete poured in Baghdad is likely to be surrounded by backed up sewage pipes, electric outlets that aren't properly grounded, and shattered windows from the latest car bomb?

A hopeful person might wish that the Iraqis are merely inept and not deliberate when they pull things like this. I'm not hopeful when it comes to the Iraqi government--clearly, there is an iron fist that shakes spokesmen and deputies and ministers until they say what someone wants to hear. You cannot accept what is being said anymore. There are no dissident voices. It's like watching a bad cartoon.

How much of that is being driven by the US is anyone's guess.

Mission NOT Accomplished: The top reconstruction project in Iraq is a $277 million failure

"In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." --George Bush, 01 May 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

More evidence that "Mission Accomplished" was then and remains today pure, unadulterated bullshit:

Iraq's Nassriya Water Treatment Plant, the country's largest reconstruction project, is a failure so far because it isn't delivering sufficient water to enough people, a new audit says.

Inspectors in December and again in February found the U.S.-funded plant 200 miles (322 kilometers) south of Baghdad was operating at only 20 percent capacity, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction said in a report released today.

``Potable water is only reaching a fraction of the Iraqi people for which it was designed and intended,'' Inspector General Stuart Bowen said. Two of the intended five cities, Ad Diwayah and Suq Al Shoyokh, weren't receiving water, he wrote.

IG for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, placed blame for the failure of the $277 million water treatment facility on the Iraqi government which took over the facility for operations in June 2007. Bowen said that the failings of the Maliki government to effectively oversee the management and operation of the facility "provides a detailed look at the challenges confronting the transfer of significant reconstruction projects for Iraqi operation as the U.S. role in reconstruction ends."

Bowen's audit found that there is no one reason that the facility is failing, instead they are myriad and complex, defying easy answers and quick fixes.

The facility was designed to operate around the clock and pump 240,000 cubic meters of potable water per day. Thing about water treatment facilities, tho, is that they require a whole hell of a lot of electricity to operate, and the national power grid is rickety and inadequate to reliably provide the power necessary to operate the plant. Another problem is a leaky and compromised water distribution system that can't withstand high water pressures. The water system is further compromised by illegal taps into the lines.

Then there is the most difficult problem to overcome - "unqualified and Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works staff unwilling to consistently attend the contractor-provided training" Bowen wrote. He also reported that "At the time of our visits, the plant was operating only one eight-hour shift a day, serving only 60 percent of the intended cities."

The facility was constructed with funds from the $20.9 billion Iraq reconstruction pool set up by the U.S government in the wake of the invasion, and Bowen took an investors-eye view of the plant, writing "The preservation of U.S. investment remains a key concern because the ultimate success of the reconstruction program depends on Iraq's capability to manage and sustain U.S.-funded projects."

And then there is the finger pointing and blame shifting.

But at the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that the Iraqi government is going to have to take over the running of their own country and the maintenance of their own facilities.

Yes, I am fully cognizant that the country was functioning before the U.S. invaded - but we can't unring that bell. If we could, Galileo knows, I would be the first in line to have a go at it. But I am not one to waste time on what-ifs, speculations and ephemera.

We need timetables and benchmarks and they need to have teeth. It is painfully obvious that the Iraqi hand will have to be forced and until it is, nothing is going to change.

And by the way - why the hell do the same people who decry dependence at home and demand an overhaul to social programs lest someone get a "free ride" in the form of food stamps or a small stipend for raising ones grandchildren insist upon fostering a much more heinous form of dependency by the government in Iraq? A single mom who is struggling to keep her nose above water, having long since given up on the notion of ever getting her head above water is fair game for dates certain - but the sovereign government of Iraq gets a pass?

Koyanisquatsi, indeed.