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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (54483)	10/19/2004 11:06:15 PM
From: Taikun	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Jay, It looks like the UN has a new line of business: they're in energy too. Blessedly, the Duelfer report clears away much of the U.N. murk. Volume I, devoted to sources of financing and procurement for Saddam's regime, provides hundreds of pages of damning details — lifting much of the cover that U.N. secrecy gave to Saddam, his business partners, and the U.N. itself (which had effectively become one of his chief business partners, thanks both to the 2.2-percent commission collected by Annan's Secretariat, and the deals parceled out by Saddam to pivotal member states). Duelfer's report, released Wednesday, includes not only general descriptions of Oil-for-Food corruption, but names, dates, methods, networks, and dollar amounts — a roster dubbed adroitly by Reuters as Saddam's "Weapons-of-Mass-Corruption." nationalreview.com David

To: TobagoJack who wrote (54483)	10/19/2004 11:47:03 PM
From: que seria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Jay: That is a typically thought-provoking piece by Stratfor, but it omits a key possible outcome. Kerry may yet win, and if he does, I bet he pulls the troops out of Iraq after next year's elections. He, his party and his country will benefit if he declares victory in the Bush war ("We got Saddam, we sponsored elections, you hate us, goodbye"). Iraqis likely have many years ahead of bloody efforts at self-government, and we need to let them get on with it. Leaving Iraq is the only way I see for Kerry to position himself to fulfill his real (domestic) political agenda. I'm sure he is anxious to give Bush a lesson in how real Democrats (not compassionate psuedo-conservatives) tax and spend. Too bad Friedman doesn't turn his insight on the counterproductive nature of U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East. Lumping Afghanistan with Iraq is an obvious effort to rub the righteous nature of the former war off on the latter, as though both are defensive or counter-terror. That is a standard rhetorical ploy, obviously refuted by reality. Iraq was a righteous war if fought to topple Saddam as an evil, murderous tyrant--but it wasn't. I hold out the hope that even GWB (and more likely Kerry) will back off policing Iraq next year. Pro-war as Bush is and Kerry postures to be, either may see the ending the occupation as the least of all evils among tough choices in an administration facing economic reckoning. The president's legacy or second term (depending upon who wins) may depend in large part on confronting the reality of how unaffordable this war of choice is in U.S. lives and resources. It is fought to benefit a people who largely resent us for prosecuting the war and now for occupying their nation. The control of oilfields, if a real reason, is a foolish one since the war has been self-defeating as a bridge to oil security. I expect we've sown more terrorists, not reduced them or their focus upon the U.S. Friedman's points about the military's claims on the nation for reasonable pay are quite valid, as is the assessment that Americans won't support a draft for wars such as Iraq. But those points are consistent with fighting wars only as needed, not as desired.