"Kidnapped workers building U.S. embassy in Baghdad" screams the Al-Jazeera headline so let us have a look at this shocking story. The story by Ahmed Abdullah states:
"An American civilian contractor revealed shocking evidence about how Filipino construction workers were tricked last year into building the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, according to an article on The Times Online. The 51 men were originally told that they’d travel to Dubai to construct hotels there, but instead found themselves in a Baghdad-bound plane!"
The story is based on the statement of Rory Mayberry testifying before a congressional committee.
The Filipinos were reportedly upset at being deceived but their protests were quelled by: "a gun-toting air steward [not named, emphasis mine] ordered them to sit down. . . . [and a] security guy [not named, emphasis mine] working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 [sub-machinegun] in the air that people settled down."
On the other hand, the same story ran on the AP by Teresa Cerojano, Associated Press Writer. The gun-toting enforcers are not mentioned and a reasonable person would conclude that the guns are a complete fabrication.
The upshot of the story is that a Philippine special envoy is traveling to the Middle East to investigate allegations that a Kuwaiti contractor took Filipino workers to Iraq without their knowledge to build the U.S. Embassy. The meat of the story is that Filipinos, contracted by the First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., thought they were going to work in Dubai and ended up in Baghdad instead.
The story really involves the Filipoino workers and a Kuwaiti company.
You don't get that impression from Al-Jazeera with the shock tactic of the U.S. kidnapping people.
People believe what they want to believe. In fact, jobs in Iraq have been a boon for many Filipino workers.
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