JOURNAL: A Paperwork Systempunkt

Iraq's energy markets and infrastructure are in free-fall.  Prices have spiked (the price of a gallon of gas went from $0.53 to $5.22 over the last several months) for basic necessities and oil exports in January are down to 1 million barrels a day (nearly 2.5 m barrels below the pre-war level of smuggled and legally exported oil).  Note the correlated rise in global energy prices (approaching $50).  This increase in effectiveness is due to an increasing focus of Iraq's global guerrillas on intelligent attacks that disrupt systempunkts (for more, see the brief on Systempunkts).  Here's an example of a bloodless (the most effective GG attacks are) paperwork systempunkt detailed in the Washington Post:

The armed men waited until at least 10 tanker trucks were in line outside the huge refinery in the Sunni Triangle city of Baiji, a major source of gasoline for Iraq. Then they made their move: Arriving in a blue Opel sedan, their faces obscured by checkered head scarves and wraparound sunglasses, the insurgents charged into the road and began moving from truck to truck.  The truckers were in no position to resist. One by one, witnesses say, they handed over the paperwork that permitted them to leave the tank farm with a load of gasoline. When the gunmen had a fat sheaf of documents, they simply got back in their sedan and drove away, effectively shutting down one more strand of gasoline distribution in a country where energy has emerged as one of the war's most critical battlefields.

Comments

[Billmon]

"When the gunmen had a fat sheaf of documents, they simply got back in their sedan and drove away, effectively shutting down one more strand of gasoline distribution"

So the insurgents are shutting down Iraq's energy system by STEALING THE PAPERWORK???

I'm tempted to say this sounds like something out of Catch-22, but Heller's world wasn't nearly as absurd.

[maru]

'Iraq's energy markets and infrastructure are in free-fall. Prices have spiked'.
Heh- guess even guerillas can appreciate verbal irony.

[Valdis]

LOL! They probably read one of the business process redesign books and figured out where to spot the bottleneck.

Nice to see that no lives were taken.