AFP Interview: US racing to get jobs for Iraqi weapons scientists

[Barrett808]

SAVANNAH, United States (AFP) - The United States is in a "race against time" to find jobs for some 400-500 Iraqi weapons scientists left idle by Saddam Hussein's ouster, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton told AFP.

It's unclear whether any of those experts have been yet courted by extremist groups or states eager to acquire chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, Bolton, whose brief is arms control, said in an interview.

But "the pattern we've seen is scientists from the former Soviet Union as the economy collapsed were without a livelihood and they were offered salaries in Iran and other places and they took it," he said.

"It's a perfectly natural reaction," he said. "We want to try to head that off in this case, and it's a race against time."

(more)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040608/wl_mideast_afp/g8_summit_us_iraq_bolton&cid=1514&ncid=1480

[RC]

1. So they can work for us, US, making new weapons?

This is another case of too little, too late.

[struggle4progress]

2. kick

:kick:

[daleo]

3. Operation paperclip

On a smaller scale.

[keithyboy]

4. Same thing happend after the fall of Nazi Germany and the USSR

If the American people only knew how much of their tax dollars went to setting these people up in plush environments and jobs over the years. And it virtually stopped nothing, otherwise we wouldn't still be worried about so many countries with weapons. (Think Pakistan and the bleeding of nuclear secrets.) Even Israel sell our secrets to others. The US will pay huges sums of money to "re-settle" these so-called scientists in the US and around the world, when in fact, they don't really have to do that...but that's another story. Suffice it to say that if you can manage to have a skill with potential for evil, the US will pay you well and take care of you, eventhough you may never have produced a damn thing.