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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (24088)	1/14/2006 5:13:07 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81137

> Iran has had a long time to get prepared and, with events in Iraq having turned out strongly in its favour, any attempt at rape will be met with the biting off of the rapists testicles, or worse. news.independent.co.uk >>A defence source said: "It is logistically eminently possible for Iran to take action against British and other coalition forces in Iraq. They have a lot of control over Shia forces and it is a leverage they are prepared to use, as we have seen already. "It does not even have to be military action for the Iranians to retaliate. We may well see an upping of destablisation efforts if Britain is seen to be leading calls for sanctions. This is something we recognise and we are preparing to meet if necessary." Meanwhile, another senior military figure, Admiral Sir Alan West, the head of the Royal Navy, warned that any military action against Iran could have "horrendous consequences" and "must be avoided". Sir Alan said even air strikes - let alone a full-scale invasion - would be extremely problematic and could have "disastrous" results. Sir Alan was the first Western military commander to express his disquiet over the possibility of an armed intervention in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme. It came amid reports that the US and Israel may bomb the nuclear facilities if Tehran refuses to back down from its belligerent stance over its nuclear testing, despite international anger. Admiral West said: "The consequence of military action would be quite horrendous. We should not do it, the matter should be resolved some other way."<<

To: sea_urchin who wrote (24088)	1/14/2006 5:25:00 PM
From: sea_urchin	Respond to of 81137

> there can be no doubt that its present strategy will only cause it to lose more soldiers, more treasure and more world prestige. The US is on a path to ruin -- aided by its own government. atimes.com >>"If Bush had come to the American people with a request to spend several hundred billion dollars and several thousand American lives in order to bring democracy to Iraq, he would have been laughed out of court." - noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama It turns out the eventual cost of the war in Iraq will not be several hundred billion, but according to a new study at least a thousand billion dollars - US$1 trillion, in other words. This figure dwarfs any previous estimate by orders of magnitude. Currently, according to Steve Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Pentagon's direct costs of military operations and foreign assistance in Iraq are about $250 billion. He notes that the government does not include many important costs. "There are clearly additional costs. We are financing the war through deficit financing. That will be at least $100 billion over the next decade." He added that government figures do "not include overall economic impact, such as the rise in oil prices generated by the war". Stiglitz and Bilmes agree with Kosiak. They note: "Given that at the onset of the war, the [US] was already running a deficit, and no new taxes have been levied, it is not unreasonable to assume, for purposes of budgeting, that all of the funding for the war to date has been borrowed, adding to the already-existing federal budget deficit. In the conservative scenario we assume that these funds are borrowed at 4% and repaid in full within five years. The moderate scenario assumes that the country continues to have a deficit over the next 20 years and therefore interest continues to accrue." << And we are talking about the next war.