Millions of Dollars of Gold Bars Found by Coalition Troops in Iraq-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This eRumor is mostly in pictures.
One is an American soldier holding a gold bar.
Another is a picture of gold bars being removed from a truck and stacked on pallets on the ground.
One picture is of what appears to be a hoard of gold bars in a tunnel or underground bunker.
The Truth:
There was a lot of publicity in May of 2003 when military forces in Iraq started discovering caches or shipments of gold bars.
One find in a truck in Iraq was estimated to be worth $500 million.
According to a Reuter’s report from August 1, 2003, however, later testing of the more than 1,000 bars that were found revealed they were not gold but mostly copper and zinc.
The experts said they were melted-down shell casings.
According to the Reuters report the revelation of the true content of the bars was made in a report to Congress about the reconstruction effort.