This is positively EVIL!

WTF?

"Next week, something will happen that will unmask the upside-down morality of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. On October 21, Iraq will pay $200m in war reparations to some of the richest countries and corporations in the world." ... "Here is a small sample of who has been getting 'reparation' awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449)."

This may be a dupe, but there's more -

http://www.world-crisis.com/analysis_comments/937_0_15_0_C/

Through the looking glass.

Toys R Us on the friggin list.

How ABSURD!

If we are paying to reconstruct and there is little Iraqui oil flowing, are we, the US taxpayers, funding the reparations?

and btw the US isn't paying to reconstruct, according to all international law you SHOULD be as the aggressors but Iraq's reconstruction is being paid for by Iraq as are the reparations.

Companies get to claim reparations even if they didn't actually suffer damage, they just have to claim business went down for a wee while while the war was on.

That is just a GIANT kick in the nuts to over 1100 soldiers and their families.

I hate this corporate regime so damn much.

Sure would be nice for once not to foot the bill.

Do Halliburton, etc. get to cut in line before these people who put their lives on the line defending our country before these corporations that lost some money? Just wondering as I comment first and snip second.

It’s an old story, but here’s the link…

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/20/60minutes/main584810.shtml

And here are some snips…

It was back in 1991 that the POWs came home from Iraq to a hero's welcome and were greeted by the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, and then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

"Your country is opening its arms to greet you," said Cheney.

Many of the POWs had suffered wounds both physical and psychological. Some of them suffer to this day, more than a decade after they were captured and appeared on Iraqi TV.

Snip

“Initially, when we filed this action, there was a large block of seized assets of Iraq, $1.7 billion, that would more than compensate any possible judgment that we had imagined in this case,” says Moore.

But when the second war in Iraq was launched, just last March, those frozen Iraqi assets were confiscated by President Bush and transferred to the U.S. Treasury Department. When the POWs won their case, they argued that U.S. law entitled them to some of that money. So the POWs decided to file a second lawsuit, this one against the secretary of the treasury, in order to collect the money that federal judge had awarded them.

That’s when the U.S. Justice Department stepped in, and argued that once the president had confiscated those frozen Iraqi assets, they were no longer assets of Iraq. And that money, said the president, was needed to assist the Iraqi people and to rebuild Iraq. The government did acknowledge that the president had the authority to use that money to pay the POWs but that he did not choose to do so.

Snip

But the story does not end there. While the POWs were shut out from getting the money they were awarded, they still have their original judgment, which holds Saddam and Iraq responsible and liable for their torture. But now, the Justice Department is trying to have that judgment thrown out.

“They wanna extinguish the case. I don't know why they would want to just wipe this off the books and say it never happened,” says Storr. “Let's just sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened.”

“I hope George Bush, the President of the United States, doesn't know about this,” says Reid. “Because if he knows about it, if he knows about it, it's a pox on his house, his White House. This is wrong.”