Aziz Hassan, Iraq’s newly-appointed Minister of Economic Reclamations was flabbergasted when he and his entourage pulled into the storage yard. “It was perfectly intact just three weeks ago when we were last here, appraising it for auction,” complained the befuddled Hassan. “We were hoping to fetch twenty or thirty million Euros for it this week. Now look at this crap!”

In those past weeks, various factions had been quietly pillaging the luxury yacht of all its valuables on a daily basis, stripping out everything from gold-plated plumbing fixtures to teak decking, to booze and food provisions.

Security measures put into place were of no avail.  Hassan had hired a squad of men from the local police department to guard the site 24/7. But when the reclamations group arrived at the site this morning, the guards were found passed out in the back seats of their SUVs, after a night of drinking champaign no doubt stolen from the yacht’s galley.

Locals had even pried metal parts off the yacht to sell for scrap, leaving only a rusting hull standing in the blowing sand. All of the windows topside had been shot out for target practice, and “Kilroy was here” was spray-painted on the starboard hull.

Pleasure cruise operator Gabriel Renard had traveled thousands of miles from Marseilles, France, to look over the ship and place a bid, only to discover that a bare, rusted skeleton was all that remained in the yard. “There’s nothing here that is worth salvaging beyond mere scrap metal,” mused Renard. “And even that is rusted and corroded. The Iraqis would be lucky to get a few hundred Euros. And who would want to haul this junk out of here?” Renard didn’t even bother to inspect the interior of the rusted ship, especially after learning there were thousands of huge camel spiders nesting inside.

C’est la vie, we always say,” quipped the good-natured Renard, as he climbed back into his rented Toyota truck. “That is not Saddam’s only spider hole,” he joked, just before driving off to the airport.