Damien Cave, The New York Times
Please click here to see how desperate people are to find work in Iraq, and what they do to survive. This is a clip from the New York Times.
BAGHDAD, Dec. 1 — Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police. Families build houses illegally on government land, carwashes steal water from public pipes, and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now be found on the black market.
Painkillers for cancer (from the Ministry of Health) cost $80 for a few capsules; electricity meters (from the Ministry of Electricity) go for $200 each, and even third-grade textbooks (stolen from the Ministry of Education) must be bought at bookstores for three times what schools once charged.
“Everyone is stealing from the state,” said Adel Adel al-Subihawi, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in disgust. “It’s a very large meal, and everyone wants to eat.”
Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and American officials assess the effects of this year’s American troop increase, there is a growing sense that, even as security has improved, Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness.
One recent independent analysis ranked Iraq the third most corrupt country in the world. Of 180 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based group that publishes the index annually.
[more]
Please click here to read the remainder of the article from the New York Times.
The Islamic Workplace 
jamesbdunn
December 4, 2007
England estimates organized crime costs their citizens more than $20 Billion pounds (~40 Billion US) annually; a large part of that being politically based. Do you expect Iraq or Iran to be less corrupt than the United States?
The political structure in Iraq promotes organized crime. In Iran, the Mola/Mula are exactly the same as the dons of the Mafia. Many of them do not even know how to read the Qur’an.
Ethical Method to Eliminate ALL Political Corruption:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/jamesbdunn?p=57
In Iraq and Iran corruption could be similarly held in check:
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/jamesbdunn2?p=43
Stop the flow of corrupt money, corruption dies. Feed the poorest of people reliably, corruption dies.