600 Filipino workers in Iraq quit

[Sticky]

MANILA — Fearing for their safety, about 600 Filipinos working inside a U.S. military base in Iraq have decided to quit after Wednesday's mortar attack on the base that killed a Filipino warehouseman and wounded four others, a Philippine official said Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the workers at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, will be flown to the United Arab Emirates in batches by a cargo aircraft chartered by their Dubai-based employer Prime Projects Inc. (Kyodo News)

http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=7&id=298552

[rooboy]

1. Cool... 600 vacancies for right wing Americans. n/t

[0007]

2. Beautiful

Why were Filipinos employed and not Americans?

[rooboy]

3. Buck fifty an hour, I'll bet. n/t

[nodictators]

10. According to a recent article in a mainstream Texas newspaper

Third-country food-service workers were paid $3/day by Halliburton. Many of these workers were from India and Pakistan.

[lostnfound]

17. Friday FSRN: Indian workers were smuggled in & treated like slaves

8:45 into the http://www.fsrn.org/news/20040514_news.html">recording:

As the scandal continues over the US and British abuses of Iraqi detainees, one side of the story that's virtually unreported is the treatment of other foreigners, particularly south Asians. Testimonials of poor and illiterate Indian workers who've escaped from US army camps in Iraq reveal they ended up trapped for months working as virtual slaves. Four kitchen assistants are now speaking out after they escaped from Iraq and have arrived back in their homes in the southern Indian state of Kerala. From India our correspondent Vinar Kayjoes (sp?) reports:

The antiAmerican, antiwar protestors have one more reason to shout slogans. Hundreds of poor Indians were recruited for the US army camps for manual labor. Now the allegations of abuse by US troops told by the first batch of returnees sparked outrage in india last week, drawing comparison with the treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Not just ex-servicemen -- even skilled and semiskilled labor is being recruited from India to serve the coalition forces in Iraq. The workers from poor Indian states are fooled into believing they will be going to Kuwait; it is only later they realize they will be forceably taken to Iraq. Four kitchen assistants have escaped from a US military base in Iraq and returned home last week. Basir Iliakunya (sp) is one of the 4 who escaped and reached home last week:

10 months back, we were recruited by an agent offering jobs in Kuwait. Once we reached Kuwait City, we were received by representatives of the company and hustled into a bus headed to Iraq. When we protested we were threatened. I had to work in a camp of American soldiers. I was a butcher working in their kitchen. I was paid peanuts, plus the humiliation. We were treated like virtual slaves. I never thought I would ever see my wife and 3 children. I shudder to think of innocent Indians taken to Iraq like lambs to the slaughter. It was a real nightmare.

FSRN had reported about a gang recruiting hundreds of workers to the US bases in Kuwait last year. When these were first returned home, it was made clear that they were duped and taken to Iraq on behalf of a unit of the US contractor Halliburton. Halliburton, formerly run by US Vice President Cheney, is a US military stock contractor providing services ranging from laundry to oil field repair.

...An estimated 3 million Indians work in the Gulf, many as laborers, construction workers, or in hotels and restaurants. It is estimated that more than 1300 indians are in Iraq.

[seemslikeadream]

4. Isn't that sweet?

Rummy hires foreign mercenaries to fight our war but their hearts are just not in it. Bye bye, fight your own war.

[juajen]

5. Is this one of our "permanent" military bases in Iraq?

Anybody have the facts on this base? Six hundred workers leave our base and I don't even know what they're doing there or anything about this military city. I know, I know, I can google it, but please guys, I'm really tired this morning.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Ahmad Sabri -- Al-Arab Al-Yawm's November 19, 2003

Ahmad Sabri -- Al-Arab Al-Yawm's November 19, 2003

Al-Arab Al-Yawm's correspondent Ahmad Sabri reports from Baghdad that sources close to the Interim Governing Council of Iraq have told al-Arab al-Yawm in Baghdad that the new US strategy in Iraq which Paul Bremer brought back to the Council members from Washington has not yet been revealed in its entirety.

The reliable sources say that there are clauses in the agreement that are to remain secret until an appropriate time comes for their publication.

The sources revealed that the most important of these secret clauses in the document -- which the Council announced after meeting Bremer at the beginning of this week -- provide for the establishment of at least six military bases in different parts of Iraq in which American forces will be concentrated on a permanent basis in order to guarantee a continued American and British presence in accordance with the strategy that brought their fleets to these hot waters in the first place.

The sources say that a number of strategic positions have been chosen with precision in various parts of Iraq to be the locations of American and British bases during the second phase of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq.

The sources revealed the names of these bases and the planned positions for permanent deployment. They are:
· Al-Habbaniyah Airbase near the city of al-Fallujah, 65km west of Baghdad,
· Ash-Sha'biyah Airbase in Basra, 600km south of Baghdad,
· 'Ali ibn Abi Taleb Airbase on the outskirts of the city of an-Nasiriyah, 400km south of Baghdad,
· al-Walid Airbase about 330km north west of Baghdad,
· al-Ghazlani Camp in the city of Mosul, 400km north of Baghdad, and
· A permanent deployment of forces in the east of Iraq in what is known as the Hamrin mountain range that extends from Diyala Provice, 60km east of Baghdad, and borders on Iran and extends to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 260km north of Baghdad.

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=1275

[truth2power]

9. I wonder how the siting of these bases

compares to the designated areas on that map that showed up last year from Cheney's energy task force.

I haven't looked at that for a long time and wouldn't know where to find it now, but I think at the time everyone thought they were carving up Iraq for various oil companies. Maybe they already had the military base sites designated - pre-liberation, so to speak. :shrug:

Just off the top of my head.

edit: clarity

[donsu]

11. the US has no right to have 6 military bases in Iraq

may we fail

[0007]

15. One day soon it will be zero ( 0 0 0 0 0 0) military bases in Iraq

I think the U.N. along with the German Army needs to put a Military Base here with 100,000 troops for about fifty years. Just to keep us in line .

[Sticky]

7. I wonder why this isn't in the mainstream media...

So much to hide - so little integrity.

[Alpharetta]

8. USA Today says rebuilding is going on schedule

http://www.usatoday.com/money/world/2004-05-12-iraqworkers_x.htm


Iraq contractors fight thinning ranks, high insurance
By James Cox, USA TODAY
The massive, U.S.-funded reconstruction of Iraq is largely on course, despite contractor fatalities, a drawdown in the number of foreign workers and sky-high insurance rates.
The beheading of American businessman Nicholas Berg, shown on an Islamic Web site Tuesday, sent a chill through many foreign contractors.

"People are scared right now because of what's going on. There have been threats from terrorists going after contractors," says Danny Benjamin, vice president of Al-Fawares, a Kuwait-based subcontractor helping to set up Iraqi media. His company had been discussing business deals with Berg.

In early April, attacks on contractor convoys and fighting between insurgents and U.S. forces prompted hundreds of foreign workers to leave the country. The number of expatriate contractors in Iraq stands at about 70% of the pre-spring total, says Portia Palmer, spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Those who left "are flowing back" and should complete their projects on time despite work stoppages in dangerous areas, Palmer says.


(more at link)

[bemildred]

13. Yeah, we completely re-write the schecule every morning,

so it always matches up, and we are always"on schedule".

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

12. I guess Rumsfeld and Cheney will have to take shifts scrubbing the

toilets in this place.

[seemslikeadream]

14. PRESIDENT BUSH CALLS ON CONGRESSIONAL--AIDS-PROOF TOILET RESEARCH

back

For Immediate Release - Office of the Press Secretary - July 25, 2002 - 9:13 A.M. (EST)


PRESIDENT BUSH CALLS ON CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS TO APPROPRIATE FUNDS FOR AIDS-PROOF TOILET RESEARCH
Statement by the President

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Thank you for coming. Earlier this week, my predecessor Bill Clinton (he who repeatedly thrust his throbbing member in the pie-hole of that chunky Jewess) had the gall to state publicly that I'm not doing enough to fight AIDS. Today I want every last American to know that Bill Clinton is wrong, and that if he spent a little less time spraying his thick, milky love seed all over dumpy California interns, maybe he'd know a thing or two about just what my administration has been up on this front - namely doing our best to make sure that every last American has access to an AIDS-proof toilet seat.

(Applause.)

http://www.whitehouse.org/news/2002/072602.asp

[Miss Authoritiva]

16. Awfully tricky to conduct combat operations, secure the occupation, and

undertake reconstruction all at the same time. Actually, it's not tricky. It's impossible. And impossibly stupid.