Bringing Bandwidth To Iraq

jemevans sends us a link to his nonfiction tale of two California cypherpunks who went to Baghdad to seek their fortune and bring the Internet to Iraq. A much abridged version ran in Wired a while back. From the original: "Ryan Lackey wears body armor to business meetings. He flies armed helicopters to client sites. He has a cash flow problem: he is paid in hundred-dollar bills, sometimes shrink-wrapped bricks of them, and flowing this money into a bank is difficult. He even calls some of his company's transactions 'drug deals' — but what Lackey sells is Internet access. From his trailer on Logistics Staging Area Anaconda, a colossal US Army base fifty miles north of Baghdad, Lackey runs Blue Iraq, surely the most surreal ISP on the planet. He is 26 years old."

Comments

Sensational

[electrosoccertux]

Sounds like a piece of sensational journalism (yeah, yeah, since when was journalism not sensation, whatever).

Such articles should be read with an eye of scrutiny and an ounce of salt.

Re:Sensational

[Achromatic1978]

P.S. Just arrived in Dubai for a little R&R. It's 2:30am and they're blasting the call to prayer at my hotel balcony while I'm trying to sit out here peacefully and post to Slashdot. What the hell?

Americans abroad: taking cultural sensitivity to new highs.

Re:Sensational

[fallungus]

A lot of good things happened in America last Monday, but you didn't hear about them because 33 people were killed on a university campus. The fact is that the good things that you mention that are happening in Iraq are just people doing their job, and a lot of the good things we are doing (rebuilding) wouldn't have been necessary if we hadn't fucked the place up to begin with. It deserves mention, but seriously tragic events like car bombings are more newsworthy simply because they are more newsworthy. It is quite disturbing that a tragedy that stopped the US dead in it's tracks (the VA tech shootings) is an everyday occurrence in Iraq. One can not possibly fathom what it must be like as a resident of Iraq (one of the 99% who are not violent insurgents), and trying to carry on your day to day life, working and raising a family.

Re:Need employees

[frank_adrian314159]

Who here on slashdot would be willing to sign up?

I'm sure there are many many right-wing types here who would love to show their support for bringing this vital infrastructure to Iraq. God knows it's safe enough to go over there now - John McCain said that there were several neighborhoods in Baghdad that he could stroll around in without any trouble and the Representative Mike Pence from Indiana said going shopping there was no different than going shopping back home. Especially now that the surge is working!

So come on, right-wing types! Where's your "support the troops" spirit?

Re:old, old "news"

[MoxFulder]

The article says he was just married - this guy is a war profiteer vulture, I hope the next article I read about him is how his car ran over an IED, possibly winning him the 2007 Darwin Award, a big component of which of course is that he can not breed and will be weeded out of the gene pool.

Hmmm... as far as I can tell from the article, he's one of the most productive and useful people in Iraq these days. Might not be the nicest guy or have the purest motives... but I'd say competence is what's most lacking there. I'd vote for him. And the other guy Tyler too, why hasn't he been tapped as the US chief of Iraqi reconstruction?

I'm totally fucking serious too. You hear about some of the incompetent bungling idiots running US operations in Iraq, and these guys both sound like they'd bring a lot to the job.