Article

2003-06-09 Iraq

U.S. troops intercept 3rd 'gold truck' fleeing Iraq

Via La Bellicosa...
KIRKUK - Another battered truck hauling what appears to be a dazzling fortune in gold bars was stopped at a routine U.S. Army checkpoint in Iraq on Wednesday, the third such cache of bullion seized in two weeks. An officer with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the unit that detained the truck near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, said that 1,183 ingots were recovered in the latest bust.

Iraq's such a poor country. I wonder why?

The seizure fits a pattern established by two similar gold-laden vehicles stopped by U.S. troops in late May. All the trucks appeared to have originated in Baghdad and seemed to be heading for either the Syrian or Iranian border. "Same modus operandi," the American officer said, on condition of anonymity. "Mercedes truck. Bad registration. Trying to pass it [the gold] off as brass." More than 4,100 gold bars have been confiscated so far from the rusty beds of old trucks trundling down the bomb-cratered roads of Iraq. The combined value of the gold has been calculated at between $718 million and $1 billion â the worst act of plunder in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's younger son, Qusai, swiped $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank.

It's terrible, the way this poor Third World country just can't get ahead...

The source of such vast quantities of gold in war-bruised Iraq remains a tantalizing mystery. U.S. officials have kept mum about the case. Ordinary Iraqis fascinated by the tale of the "gold trucks" have spawned conflicting rumors. Some say the loot is Kuwaiti gold seized during the 1990 Iraqi invasion, while others insist it is treasure pried from thousands of looted Baath Party safety-deposit boxes in Baghdad. But a source close to the U.S. investigation said that all the truck-borne ingots share the same strange characteristic: The bars aren't pure, like the bullion found at Fort Knox, but crudely melted bricks of jewelry. That obscure detail convinces many knowledgeable Iraqis that the gold's journey stretches all the way back to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and into Saddam's greedy pockets. "Iraq has no major gold reserves, and no Iraqi banks ever held this much private jewelry," said Daya al-Khayoun, director general of Iraq's state-run Rafideen Bank, which saw 60 of its 70 Baghdad branch offices gutted by looters after the war. "What was found in those trucks has to be the gold Saddam asked Iraqis to donate to fight the Iran war," al-Khayoun said. "That gold helped keep him in power."

I think I'm starting to get a glimmer why the Iraqis remained a poor country despite their natural riches...

During the bleakest years of the conflict between Iran and Iraq, Saddam and his ministers appeared on Iraqi television, exhorting citizens to contribute their jewelry to the war effort. Some of that jewelry ended up being hammered into a solid gold carriage for Saddam, which broke under its own weight during a 1996 parade. But the bulk of the people's patriotic largess ended up unspent in state vaults beneath Iraq's Central Bank or in Saddam's presidential palaces, al-Khayoun said.

"Holmes! You don't think the fact that the nation's rulers could see no further than money, guns and wild wimmin had anything to do with the nation's poverty?"

Posted by Fred Pruitt 2003-06-09 02:16 pm|| || Front Page|| [12 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Who do they used to move this stuff, Stupid Guy Trucking?

Posted by tu3031 2003-06-09 15:32:09|| 2003-06-09 15:32:09|| Front Page Top

#2 Makes me wonder how many are getting through.

Posted by Anonymous 2003-06-09 16:12:00|| 2003-06-09 16:12:00|| Front Page Top

#3 How many are getting through? The Hussein's were wonderfully inept at covert operations. They were never good at devolving the authority necessary to operate in a fluid environment.

The gold smuggling operation has the Husseins' fingerprints all over it. Centralized (a few big trucks rather than a lot of little ones), rigidly executed, poor results. This tells me at least one of these mo fo's is still alive and calling the shots. How much is getting through? Using only big trucks instead of small ones means that you are limited to only a few improved roads. Checkpoints tend to be on big roads. My swag is that the majority of the gold in this smuggling operation being intercepted. Refining that answer further depends on knowledge of factors that probably none of us here are privy to.

Posted by 11A5S 2003-06-09 16:27:17|| 2003-06-09 16:27:17|| Front Page Top

#4 Man, I hate to say this, but we're talking about Iraq here: could this jewelry have come from families Saddam murdered? The Nazis certainly "harvested" gold from their victims...

Posted by R. McLeod 2003-06-09 18:49:30|| 2003-06-09 18:49:30|| Front Page Top

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