$45m secretly bought freedom of foreign hostages (Western

France, Italy and Germany sanctioned the payment of $45 million in deals to free nine hostages abducted in Iraq, according to documents seen by The Times.

All three governments have publicly denied paying ransom money. But according to the documents, held by security officials in Baghdad who have played a crucial role in hostage negotiations, sums from $2.5 million to $10 million per person have been paid over the past 21 months. Among those said to have received cash ransoms was the gang responsible for seizing British hostages including Kenneth Bigley, the murdered Liverpool engineer.

France, Germany, and Italy are paying millions to captors to release hostages taken in Iraq. This is crazy. I may not like the war or occupation or any of the people who planned it. But the only viable exit strategy involves de-escalating the violence, not paying millions to the people who are initiating some of the violence.

http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,301620,00.jpg Look at those relieved smiles. They look like a million bucks, and maybe they're even worth five million pounds. But they are not worth the dozens who may be killed by the weapons all that ransom money will buy. If the Euros are buying off hostages, that would explain why European hostages are not being killed. But it would also explain at least where some of the funding for the ongoing terror-insurgencies is coming from.

I opposed this war because I value life. But governments who are authorizing buy-offs of hostages are only valuing the lives of their people and ignoring the overall cost in blood when kidnap gangs, who are almost certainly connected to terrorists in Iraq, become well funded organizations.

More than 250 foreigners have been abducted since the US-led invasion in 2003. At least 44 have been killed; 135 were released, three escaped, six were rescued and the fate of the others remains unknown.

A number of other governments, including those of Turkey, Romania, Sweden and Jordan, are said to have paid for their hostages to be freed, as have some US companies with lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq. At least four businessmen with dual US and Iraqi nationality have been returned, allegedly in exchange for payments by their employers. This money is often disguised as "expenses" paid to trusted go-betweens for costs that they claim to incur.

Basic economics people. If you pay people millions of pounds, euros, or dollars for doing something, you're basically asking them to repeat their actions. People will die because of these pay offs and peace will become that much harder to achieve. This is only a small slice of the insanity you unleash when you start up a war.

As for Italy, its new leader has promised to pull its troops before his predecessor's set deadline. This could be a smear.

:headbang:
rocknation

Argue about the strategy of holding back payments and bad precedence all you want, but those are the facts.

Saving 9 Europeans may cost 9000 Iraqi's there lives. Given the ammunition 45million can buy.

you or somebody you care about is the hostage. Tell me how much you care about what they do with the money then.

Anyone who tells you that they wouldn't give anything to save their daughter, should she be kidnapped, would be a liar. The problem is that you have to look at it in the context of greater numbers when you're a government. That's why these questions are meant to be responded to dispassionately.

1 Citizen kidnapped. Pay them a million. 2 new citizens kidnapped. Two million. 3. 4. 8. 16.

Eventually they kidnap someone who can't pay, won't pay, nobody will pay for. It's inevitable. If you reward this behavior with payouts it becomes normal behavior. Just look at parts of South America where this was an epidemic for a while. Reward the kidnappers, and not only will they keep doing it, but they'll use the ransom money to buy weapons to kill more people.

When someone enters an area like Iraq, they have full knowledge that they're taking their life in their own hands. These people chose to go knowing the risks. Paying for their freedom just ends up killing mroe people. You might save your one french girl with that 5 million dollars, but it'll be used for explosives and bullets and guns to kill hundreds if not thousands of others.

One western girl's life (one who has chosen to face danger) versus even just one innocent iraqi girl's life who will get killed by the bomb paid for by ther ransom money. Except it's not just one, it's hundreds.

...that's just a side benefit.

They're paying the ransom to avoid a domestic political hit. That's also why they're keeping the ransom payments secret.