Kidnapped in Iraq? (Suit alleges ex-CIA agent kidnapped businessman)

[Barrett808]

Kidnapped in Iraq?
Sunday, September 12, 2004
By EDDIE CURRAN
Staff Reporter

In a lawsuit that reads like a proposal for a Hollywood movie, Mobile businessman Robert Isakson, his brother Bud and 14-year-old son Bobby have accused a company led by an ex-CIA agent of kidnapping them at gunpoint and forcing them to flee "through the Sunni Triangle, the most dangerous area of Iraq ... without weapons, security or guards."

The story told in the lawsuit puts the Mobile-based disaster services firm that Isakson co-owns, DRC Inc., in the middle of the action in Iraq and at the center of a web of intrigue that includes offshore companies, overbilling on a war contract and a much-reported incident involving a mysterious flight out of Baghdad by a Lebanese businessman toting some $12 million in new Iraqi money.

DRC, as described in its lawsuit, is the good guy. The bad guy, the company claims, is Virginia-based Custer Battles LLC.

As told in the legal filings, Custer Battles took revenge against Isakson and DRC after Isakson accused Custer Battles of defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led body that governed Iraq until the United States turned that role over to the Iraqis in June.

(more)

http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/109498071087860.xml

[OzarkDem]

1. We don't know what we don't know

about what's really going on in Iraq, who's in charge, where the money is going, what's being done. These stories are just showing the tip of the iceberg. Its plain the "reconstruction" of Iraq is just a small sideshow, getting little attention.

No doubt the corruption and theft of US taxpayer dollars is on a massive scale. It will take years to unravel all this. Kerry can't begin to outline a detailed plan for getting us out of there until he's had a chance to wade through the mess.

[acmavm]

2. Even if Kerry wins, the chances of proving half of what they've done will

be next to impossible. These people are pretty good at burying the bodies, literally AND figurativly.

[sattahipdeep]

3. Bremer's version Between The Lines

That story was subsequently backed up by Paul Bremer, the top
American official in Iraq at the time, who said that the funds were for
an urgent purchase of armored vehicles and security equipment.

Still, hundreds of Iraqis protested outside Bremer's offices and accused
appointed Iraqi officials of corruption. Also, government watchdogs
have expressed doubt about Bremer's version, according to news
reporters.
____________________________________________________

Between The Lines: Do you see the anti-globalization organizations
and the peace groups focusing their attention now on the post-war
situation in Iraq, the privatizations and the threat, as you say, that this
could be the template -- the model for future engagements by the
United States and their corporate sponsors?

Naomi Klein: I think it is starting to happen. But frankly if we're to be
honest, I think we have to admit that we on the left are destabilized. I
personally think more than anything else this is the Bush strategy, which
is to behave so quixotically, so unpredictably -- basically to act like a
crazy person (laughs) -- that basically all of your potential opposition is
in a permanent state of destabilization, trying to figure out what the next
move is going to be.

It's been really difficult to think strategically over the past year and a
half. But I think that there's certainly consensus that we need to, that
we need to somehow find our bearings and to understand that the fact
that we're confused is not a coincidence, that it's a strategy.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00116.htm

[struggle4progress]

4. kick

:kick: