News & Events
QUOTE: A corrupt deal for security wands left Iraq vulnerable to Baghdad bomb blast
By Mustafa Salim and Loveday Morris, July 4, 2016
THE WASHINGTON POST: In his book “The Struggle for Iraq’s Future,” Zaid al-Ali recounts how two weeks after the U.K. court decision against McCormick, several explosions killed dozens in the Iraqi capital. Then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called a news conference, where he was asked why the devices were still in use.
Ali said the response left him “dumbfounded.” The prime minister said he formed several committees to investigate claims that the devices were fake. He said that the results found that the devices worked between 20 and 54 percent of the time if the soldiers knew how to use them correctly. Although some devices were fake, others were real, he said.
There were only two ways of interpreting the prime minister’s comments, Ali wrote. “Either he believed what he was saying (which would mean that he was incapable of understanding what was painfully obvious to just about everyone else) or he was deliberately twisting the truth (which would mean that the security and well-being of Iraqis was for him secondary to protecting his own reputation).
He described it as “a perfect illustration of how Iraqis’ problems were caused not by religion and race, but by misgovernment.”