Take a look at this from MatthewYglesias and then read about Kieran Healy’s idea for Freedom Markets.

If you start hearing talk about the bad economy being the price of freedom on your local Clear Channel station you can bet that it is part of the Bush campaign strategy. Hey, if the US people don’t buy this how is he gonna fight another war and still get elected again.

Day by day the situation gets worse in Bagdad (and probably much of the rest of Iraq). As reported by BBC News:

The International Red Cross has urged US forces to restore the Iraqi capital’s power supply and other basic services as the threat to public health grows daily.

Roland Huguenin-Benjamin of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the BBC that less than half of the city’s hospitals were functioning – the rest had been ransacked by looters.

in a further sign of chaos, looters can now be seen selling stolen weapons and ammunition – including Kalashnikov assault rifles – openly on the streets.

The UN children’s fund Unicef says piles of rubbish are accumulating at the hospitals and up to 70% of patients at the children’s hospital now have diarrhoea.

It all speaks for itself. Ah, but Bechtel is riding in to clean up Rumsfeld’s mess.

I was just going to check email when I woke up my laptop this morning. But no, staring me in the face was this piece by Theresa Nielsen Hayden that Demosthenes had pointed me to just before I fell asleep last night.

So I read it. You should as well. She tells you what you should understand about looting, why the COW could not (would not?) control it and nicely summarizes the history of war cheerleading.