Huge Iraq jobless rate a ticking timebomb

[DuctapeFatwa]

The Iraqi contractor needed only one construction worker, but two labourers wanted the job, so they started hitting each other with steel bars. Even though they were friends, what mattered was a day's work in Baghdad, capital of a country devastated by three wars, more than a decade of United Nations sanctions and now under the control of U.S.-led occupation forces.

Co-workers treated one man's gushing head wound, as the other quickly left Baghdad's busy Tayeran market, where hundreds of labourers gather each day, laying steel mallets and hammers on the pavement in the hope of casual work. "Someone wanted to hire the other. So they fought," said a friend of the workers with a shrug. Others said it was a common sight. Work is that scarce in Iraq.

Forget Saddam Hussein's loyalists and foreign Muslim fighters attacking U.S. troops daily. The biggest timebomb in Iraq, ordinary people say, is the huge number of jobless.

A joint United Nations/World Bank report issued last month estimated that in a country of 26 million people, 50 percent of Iraq's work force were unemployed and underemployed...

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=401163§ion=news

[Laughing Mirror]

1. a terrible tragedy

wrought by corporate fanaticism and backed by right-wing wingnut religious zeal to force their brand of what they call democracy on these people

to paraphrase de Villepin to Bush, How many desperate out-of-work people killing each other for jobs and rioting in the streets will it take to realize your plan is not working?