US Foreign Policy

Investing in the Future?

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James Joyner, Outside the Beltway, thinks this “may be the strangest story of the year”:

The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.

Maybe not so strange when you consider the folks behind this. Just imagine the opportunities to line the pockets of selected investors. Of course, the current administration would never consider something like that.
Hmmmm, how much would someone need to bet invest before they were incented to hire lobbyists; make campaign contributions; or perhaps hire a hit squad? Just imagine the possibilities….

Are They or Aren’t They?

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The Talking Dog read Pravda today and has wandered down an interesting conspiratorial path. You need to go there to read the good stuff. He raises interesting questions and I hope the Dog’s ending bark is the real one:

Let me just say that I hope American forces actually did get Q and U– if for no other reason, so that Iraqis need no longer live in fear of the Tikriti dynasty beyond the aging Saddam himself (even if supposedly 80% of Iraqis believe the photos are fake). Please, let’s not have fucked this one up too…

Management Shakeup in Iraq?

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The Washington Post reports that the bushies want to bring James Baker in to help clean up the mess:

The White House hopes to persuade former secretary of state James A. Baker III to take charge of the physical and economic reconstruction of Iraq as part of a broad restructuring of post-war efforts, administration sources said today.
Under the plan, L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, would focus on rebuilding the country’s political system.

It is clear that Baker will bring a uniquely informed perspective to this job if he takes it. He may though prefer to continue his current work:

A $1 trillion lawsuit on behalf of the victims of September 11 was filed in August 2002 against more than seventy defendants, including three Saudi princes, several Saudi banks and Islamic institutions, the Sudanese government and the Saudi Bin Laden Group, a construction firm run by Osama Bin Laden’s family. Here’s a report on who’s representing the defendants, from MSNBC:
Baker & Botts, Sultan’s [Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi defense minister] law firm, for example, still boasts former secretary of State James Baker as one of its senior partners. Its recent alumni include Robert Jordan, the former personal lawyer for President Bush who is now US ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

As usual Bilmon has a unique take on the bushies need to involve Jim Baker in post war Iraq:

But a drowning man will clutch at straws, so they say, and a Bush in trouble will clutch at … a retired secretary of state. Personally, I think sending another conservative Texas asshole to the Middle East is overkill, given that Tom DeLay is heading that way already. But you know, God does talk to Shrub, and Baker is a very powerful … being.
Maybe he can walk on water.

Do read the rest.

Great….but,

This entry was posted in Iraq US Foreign Policy War on Terrorism on by

From the Washington Post:

Uday and Qusay Hussein, the two sons of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, were killed today by U.S. troops in a firefight in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez announced this afternoon in a news conference in Baghdad…….
The resistance was reportedly stiff when the U.S. troops arrived at the villa in Mosul this morning. Sanchez said the “suspects barricaded themselves in the house” and “died in a fierce gun battle.”
Four bodies were taken from the villa, but Sanchez said they have not yet confirmed the identities of the other two people. Four soldiers also were injured in the battle.
The dead did not include Saddam Hussein,

Hmmmmm….fierce gun battle and stiff resistance? Maybe these guys had 8 arms each or something. Wouldn’t it have been much more useful to have uday and qusay alive? You know, questions and answers??
Via Talkleft.

Domino Theory Redux

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Charles Dodgson asks why the bushies might have a list (see Moving to Canada two posts down):

Needless to say, the Iraq war has put something of a strain on things, particularly since the Syrians regarded it as ill-advised to start with, and cooperation isn’t nearly now what it was. But the reckless American border attack seems intended to gin up tensions further, perhaps to provoke yet another war.
And why would anyone in the administration want to provoke a war with a strained Arab state which also has a simmering border dispute with Israel, the region’s ultimate tinderbox?

Go read his answer. I hope you sleep well tonight.