Mother of all surprises in Iraq....

[fuzzyball]

This Newsweek article claims that Iraq's economy is
booming inspite of all the violence going on. This
sounds inplausible because why are then thousands of
Iraqi's fleeing Iraq? Jordan and Syria have had to seal their
borders because of influx of refugees.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16241340/site/newsweek/

[Jackpine Radical]

1. The economy is booming...

because we're blowing up the infrastructure?

[elfin]

2. Zilllions of greenbacks flying around

and US enabling imports to buy fancy cell phones etc. - all the more useful to detonate roadside bombs.

[BeFree]

7. I call it....

welfare. The US government now has the whole nation of Iraq as a welfare client. Easy money.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Everything's booming in Iraq.

Quite literally.

[fuzzyball]

5. Sad but funny....eom

[angstlessk]

4. 'booming'..now there is an ironical choice of words..the coffin, shroud

and funeral business is caused by the booming maybe...there is ALWAYS money to be made by corrupt people especially during chaos.

[RC]

6. Brought to you by the same people that brought you the

expanding economy here.

[AndyTiedye]

8. Large Amounts of the Iraqi Economy Are Going BOOM

Who Is "Silvia Spring", the alleged author of this piece?

[fuzzyball]

11. One of the Bush Twins?

Seriously, I have no idea, never heard of her.

[Jack Rabbit]

9. There goes the MSM again

Rewriting a White House press release and calling it news.

[BrotherBuzz]

10. WH press release channeled through Kurdistan Development Corporation,

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce - Iraq Bureau, and RM&R's Sal Russo. I suspect Melanie Morgan and her Astroturf® movement, Move America Forward, will be jumping on the bandwagon soon, too.

[Cocoa]

12. they left out one especially prosperous industry

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061216/wl_mideast_afp/iraqshiitereligion

by Hassan Abdel Zahra Sat Dec 16, 2:50 PM ET

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - Najaf, home to the golden domed shrine of the Imam Ali, is Iraq's holiest Shiite city and has long lived off a constant flow of pilgrims.

Now, with Iraq engulfed in a vicious sectarian war, it also prospers from a never-ending flow of bodies that are brought for burial in one of the largest cemeteries in the world.

Every day fleets of minibuses ferry Shiite corpses to Najaf and the massive Wadi al-Salam (Valley of Peace) cemetery that stretches out from the old city to fill six square kilometers (about two square miles) with some five million graves.

Never has the business of death been more prosperous in Najaf than in the three-and-a-half years since the US-led invasion of Iraq.

more...

[NV1962]

13. Welfare warfare at work (n/t)

[leftofthedial]

14. unemployment is said to be 70% in Baghdad

the only thing booming is car bombs and IED's.

[GreenZoneLT]

15. Actually, Kurdistan's doing GREAT

Especially compared to pre-2003. There's no fighting there once you get north of Kirkuk and Mosul (the peshmerga kill anyone who LOOKS like an Arab terrorist), there's an enormous amount of new infrastructure (pretty easy to improve, as Saddam built basically none). And there's a big influx of smart, productive refugees from central Iraq to take advantage of the jobs that are being created. Americans walk around Erbil with no body armor.

Southern Iraq also has more clean water, paved roads and electricity than they had under Saddam, and the oil and electricity infrastructure is being built up and repaired slightly faster than it's being destroyed by sabotage. They've even made considerable progress on restoring the Euphrates River marshes that Saddam destroyed after the Marsh Arab revolt in 1991.

Anbar, Diyala, Salah ad Din, Babil and Baghdad provinces, unfortunately, are still violent hellholes, and (according to the ISG) deteriorating. Unemployment in Baghdad is over 50 percent, and you take your life into your hands every time you leave your house (or even if you stay home, in some ethnically mixed neighborhoods).

[fuzzyball]

16. Good information...thanks for posting..

[seabeyond]

17. they are taking a couple billion tax $ a week and throwing it into their eco.

just sayin

[kentuck]

18. It's a false economy, much like the USA's...

There is about 50% unemployment in Iraq. It strains credibility to say that is a "booming economy". No doubt, like the US, some people are booming.