Fasten seatbelts, flak jackets, on Iraq highway

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LYO443433.htm

<snip>The gunners swaying on the back of the battlewagons wore dark goggles, helmets and scarves round their faces. Swarthy men with moustaches poked rifles from the windows. A bearded man in a cowboy hat rode in the front of one pickup.

U.S. special forces? CIA agents? Hard to tell.

<snip>Further south, a score of gleaming Turkish fuel trucks lumbered along, two or three abreast, escorted by U.S. troops in two Humvee vehicles -- Iraq, sitting on the world's second biggest oil reserves, now imports petrol from its neighbours.

One reason soon became clear.

Black smoke and flames billowed from an oil pipeline set ablaze by saboteurs trying to disrupt the U.S.-led occupation and efforts to rebuild Iraq.

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[saigon68]

1. "BRING EM ON" cried the Halliburton Execs

We make money both ways

1. Selling the oil

2. Fixing the pipeline