Head of Iraq construction group kidnapped in Baghdad

[Cocoa]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5762678

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen kidnapped the head of an Iraqi state-owned construction company on Saturday as he drove from his home in a southern Baghdad suburb to work, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

Raad Adnan Mahmoud, director of the al-Mansour Contracting Company, was seized after the gunmen blocked his car in a busy street in the Zaieuna neighborhood in the southeast of the capital, Ministry spokesman Colonel Adnan Abdel Rahman said.

Al-Mansour, one of Iraq's largest construction companies, has carried out several reconstruction projects for Iraq's ministries, including a housing complex in Baghdad and military barracks for the new Iraqi army.

As well as running al-Mansour, Mahmoud is also a senior official in Iraq's Housing and Construction Ministry.

more...

[truth2power]

1. Heard this on NPR just before coming here.

"The assassinations appear an attempt to disrupt Iraq's reconstruction and unsettle the interim Iraqi government, which regained sovereignty from U.S. authorities late last month."

I wish the media would stop with this load of crap. Sovereignty? The Iraqis don't have no stinking sovereignty. If they really had a sovereign government, maybe they wouldn't have to resort to kidnapping and assassination to have their voices heard. IMHO