BBC: Brain Drain Puts New Strain On Iraq

[Hissyspit]

Don't you just love rhyming headlines? Seriously, check out the quotes from the doctor...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4726281.stm

Brain drain puts new strain on Iraq
By Caroline Hawley
BBC News, Baghdad

In stifling summer heat, Dr Muthanna al-Assal patiently waits his turn in a jostling queue. Like many doctors in Baghdad, he is making preparations to leave the country.

The main passport office in the city is crammed with people, like Dr Assal, trying to get out of Iraq. Some are planning holidays in neighbouring countries but others are in search of a better, safer life abroad.

"If I can get a job elsewhere, I'll go," says the 35-year old chest and heart surgeon. "Things are going downhill here both with security and basic services. And there's no hope in the near future. I think conditions will take 20 years to improve."

And the long-term implications of the exodus are troubling. Iraq suffered a massive brain drain under Saddam Hussein, when an estimated four million people fled into exile.
"Our best professionals left a long time ago," says one government official.

MORE

[dutchdoctor]

1. Interesting picture they post with that story..

Is that what a brain drain looks like? I've always wondered

[highnooner]

2. The intelligentsia and professional classes

have been leaving for over a year now because of threats to their security.

===================

Assassinations Tear Into Iraq's Educated Class
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

New York Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 6 — Abdul al-Latif al-Mayah was never safe. Not before the war started, and not after.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mayah, a 53-year-old political scientist and human rights advocate known in his neighborhood here as "the professor," was driving to work when eight masked gunmen jumped in front of his car. They yanked him into the street, the police said, and shot him nine times in front of his bodyguard and another university lecturer.

In an instant, he became one of hundreds of intellectuals and midlevel administrators who Iraqi officials say have been assassinated since May in a widening campaign against Iraq's professional class.

"They are going after our brains," said Lt. Col. Jabbar Abu Natiha, head of the organized crime unit of the Baghdad police. "It is a big operation. Maybe even a movement."

These white-collar killings, American and Iraqi officials say, are separate from — and in some ways more insidious than — the settling of scores with former Baath Party officials, or the singling-out of police officers and others thought to be collaborating with the occupation. Hundreds of them have been attacked as well in an effort to sow insecurity and chaos.

But by silencing urban professionals, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, a spokesman for the occupation forces, the guerrillas are waging war on Iraq's fledgling institutions and progress itself. The dead include doctors, lawyers and judges.

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/Assassinations_Tear_Into_Iraqs_Educated_Class.html

[bushisanidiot]

3. Johnny Cochran would be proud of that headline

brain drain has put a strain on THIS country, because of the idiot in charge.

[On the Road]

4. Sounds Like a New York Tabloid

Brain Drain Strains Iraqi Reign.
Danes Feign Pain as Numbers Wane
Hussein the Bane of Humane Domain

No reason to stop there either:

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