From this Salt Lake Tribune article about Kurdish bootlegging from Iraq to Iran?
That’s right, what’s missing is any indication that the CDA, the American military or the Provisional Council give a flying leap about this. Indeed, this particular version of the article includes text omitted from the SLT, for some odd reason:
Besides liquor, Iraqi exports to Iran include cigarettes, televisions, vacuum cleaners, scrap metal and heavy machinery, as well as subsistence food such as rice and beans, the soldiers said. But liquor is the most lucrative, Spence-Sales said.
Six U.S. military surveillance units and 870 Iraqi border police officers–most of them ex-Kurdish independence fighters–patrol the 434 miles of border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran.
Mule and horse trains have long plied the rocky mountain trails leading between the two countries, Spence-Sales said. The U.S. military and its Iraqi allies keep an eye on the incoming trade, usually only checking travelers’ documents and watching for Islamist fighters coming from Afghanistan, he said.
Spence-Sales, dining with five other U.S. soldiers at a fancy hotel in Sulaimaniyah, said he had no moral qualms allowing Iranians access to banned liquor.
“They call us infidels for our loose moral standards,” he said. “But they live just like everyone else. You have to balance the rhetoric with what really happens.”
Well, you could hardly expect the SLT to include that bit, I suppose: their readers have their own opinions about liquor, after all. All in all, this is an interesting destabilization gambit – well, more accurately, it’s a profitable operation that can be harnessed for political scenarios – I wonder how long it’s been going on?
(Via the on-the-wagon-until-successful-reproduction Vodkapundit, poor fellow)
Moe