Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Il saccheggio dell'aereoporto di bagdad

con possible sottotitolo
"ove si mostra che il livello dei legionari dell'impero e' assai
basso"
postato per intero con cut & paste dalla url citata che non
vorrei mai che sparisca dalla rete un simile pezzo...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/archive/covers/0,16641,1101030714,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,1101030714,00.html
 
  Grounding Planes the Wrong Way: Coalition troops looted and
vandalized the Iraqi airport that now must be rebuilt
 
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030714/wairport.html
 
  Grounding Planes the Wrong Way 
   Coalition troops looted and vandalized the Iraqi airport that now
must be rebuilt
Non e' uno scherzo, andare alla url originale per credere!
   By Simon Robinson I Baghdad 
  Posted Sunday, July 6, 2003 
  Much has been written about how Iraqis complicated the task of
rebuilding their country by looting it after
  Saddam Hussein's regime fell. In the case of the international
airport outside Baghdad, however, the theft
  and vandalism were conducted largely by victorious American troops,
according to U.S. officials, Iraqi Airways
  staff members and other airport workers. The troops, they say, stole
duty-free items, needlessly shot up the
  airport and trashed five serviceable Boeing airplanes. "I don't want
to detract from all the great work that's
  going into getting the airport running again," says Lieut. John
Welsh, the Army civil-affairs officer charged with
  bringing the airport back into operation. 
  "But you've got to ask, If this could have been avoided, did we
shoot ourselves in the foot here?"
  What was then called Saddam International Airport fell to soldiers
of the 3rd Infantry Division on April 3. For
  the next two weeks, airport workers say, soldiers sleeping in the
airport's main terminal helped themselves
  to items in the duty-free shop, including alcohol, cassettes,
perfume, cigarettes and expensive watches.
  Welsh, who arrived in Iraq in late April, was so alarmed by the
thievery that he rounded up a group of Iraqi
  airport employees to help him clean out the shop and its storage
area. He locked everything in two
  containers and turned them over to the shop's owner. "The man had
tears in his eyes when I showed him
  what we had saved," says Welsh. "He thought he'd lost everything." 
  Coalition soldiers also vandalized the airport, American sources
say. A boardroom table that Welsh and Iraqi
  civil-aviation authority officials sat around in early May was, a
week later, a pile of glass
  s and splintered wood. Terminal windows were smashed, and almost
every door in the building was broken,
  says Welsh. A TIME photographer who flew out of the airport on April
12 saw wrecked furniture and
  English-language graffiti throughout the airport office building as
well as a sign warning that soldiers caught
  vandalizing or looting would be court-martialed. "There was no
chance this was done by Iraqis" before the
  airport fell, says a senior Pentagon official. "The airport was
secure when this was done." Iraqi airport staff
  concede that some of the damage was inflicted by Iraqi exiles
attached to the Army, but these Iraqis too were
  under American control. 
  The airplanes suffered the greatest damage. Of the 10 Iraqi Airways
jets on the tarmac when the airport fell, a
  U.S. inspection in early May found that five were serviceable: three
727s, a 747 and a 737. Over the next few
  weeks, U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs
ripped out many of the planes' fittings,
  slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every
windshield. "It's unlikely any of the planes
  will fly again," says Welsh, a reservist who works for the aviation
firm Pratt & Whitney as a quality-control
  liaison officer to Boeing. 
  U.S. estimates of the cost of the damage and theft begin at a few
million dollars and go as high as $100
  million. Airport workers say even now air conditioners and other
equipment are regularly stolen. "Soldiers do
  this stuff all the time, everywhere. It's warfare," says a U.S.
military official. "But the conflict was over when this
  was done. These are just bored soldiers." Says Welsh: "If we're here
to rebuild the country, then anything we
  break we have to fix. We need to train these guys to go from
shoot-it-up to securing infrastructure. Otherwise
  we're just making more work for ourselves. And we have to pay for
it."

a U.S. military official.
Certo certo ... :))
-Stefano

 Certo certo ... :))
A dece', ma che cazzo ciai da ridere?