06-07-2008, 08:56 PM
Quote:It seems like a scheme to rip off the American tax payers for $2.5 billion dollars, then use the money to buy influence with top officials and key corporations. America gives billions to Iraq, Alsammarae embezzles the money, Iraq convicts him, America helps him to escape, Alsammarae buys off politicians with stolen money. I smell a rat.
Could well be. The inner workings of the Iraqi government / reconstruction program nexus are almost totally opaque to me. Obviously, lots of people are making off like bandits, and everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else.
Since the FBI has apparently cold-shouldered attempts to get Alsammarae back to Iraq, I'm going to guess that either he has friends in high places, or the FBI thinks he's a target in Iraq taking the fall. Maliki clearly hates him, and what that means, I have no idea. (He is also fingering Blackwater in Alsammarae's escape, which may be part of his general campaign against Blackwater, or he may know better than we do.) Did he buy off the Americans? Or just piss of the Iraqis? Or a little of both?
I suspect that Rezko, like so many other shady dealers with connections in the middle east, saw an opportunity when his lifelong friend, Alsammarae, gets the job in the reconstruction of Iraq's energy grid. Now, maybe Alsammarae was shady too at this point, or maybe that happened later, after becoming minister. (Or, there's an outside chance, he's not shady, just wrongly accused, but I doubt that.) I also wonder if Rezko didn't try to use this opportunity to move from being a local Chicago heavy to cashing in bigtime with Iraq contracts. Or maybe it's all just Chicago real estate to him.
And what the heck is up with his attempts to act as a mediator between the sides in Iraq? I don't get that at all. Maybe he did that at the US' prompting, and they're now protecting him for it? Or maybe he just had really big ideas and a very small reserve of common sense. Very bizarre.
But, this is all just wondering out loud. Too many people have an agenda I don't know about for me to try and pick out what's what.
-Jester