[atimes.com]

"Highways in and out of Baghdad are suicidal: the Americans can't control any of them. Anyone is a potential kidnapping target, either for the Sunni guerrilla or criminal gangs. Officials at the Oil and Electricity Ministries tell of at least one attack a day. Oil pipelines are attacked and distribution interrupted virtually every week."

"In its Global Corruption Report 2005, Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) blasted the widespread corruption in Iraq, which has benefited US contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. TI stressed that the new Iraqi government, the American occupying power and international donors, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, must urgently insist on decentralizing governance, loans and aid projects; otherwise "Iraq will become the biggest corruption scandal in history". "