Gas shortage fuels resentment in Iraq

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20041230/ts_usatoday/gasshortagefuelsresentmentiniraq&cid=676&ncid=1480

<snip>

"We are tired of asking everybody to line up," Riyah Abdul Rehman says. "That is why I am using the AK-47, to show them that we are serious about taking action against those who do not obey the rules."


Buying gasoline in Iraq (news - web sites) is a serious undertaking. Determined motorists get up before their dawn prayers to join 2-mile-long lines. Sometimes they don't get to fill their tanks until evening. A black market is thriving.


It has not gone unnoticed that the lines returned at the same time Iraq is taking over energy services from the former U.S. occupation authorities. Mustapha Humam, 33, a taxi driver, says he and others in his line are sure of one thing: They don't want to vote in the Jan. 30 elections for anyone responsible for the current gas shortage.

"All the gas they give to their friends and relatives. They are corrupt," he says of Iraqi officials.

[Tesla]

1. It just gets uglier and uglier........

Can you imagine being a citizen of a country with one of the most gas production in the world, and having to wait all day for a fill-up?

I can see something burning in the future.


Red Adare, where are you????

[Barkley]

2. Under Saddam, Iraq exported gasoline.

Iraq used to export refined oil products before the war. Imports now cost the country $200 million a month, with oil products coming by truck from Turkey, Iran, Jordan and Syria, and through the Khor al-Zubeir terminal on the Gulf.

“Fuel crisis threatens Iraqi interim rule.” Al Jazzera News, December 11, 2004

[Massachusetts]

3. Why are they complaining?

WE are building them Libraries and Women's Centers. (sarcasm):bounce:

[Deja Q]

4. Iraq today, US tomorrow. We are seeing our own future. Was this *'s

idea of 'compassionate conservativism?

[MADem]

5. Shades of Iran, 79!!!

The same thing was happening there, just before the Shah was deposed. The price doubled (it was still cheap) and the lines went on forever.