Gavin
booty bass intellectual
In any case, surely if we follow Stiglitz's arguments through to their logical conclusions, it would be more efficient to pull out all troops and just bomb Iraq with money.
MAKE IT RAIN
In any case, surely if we follow Stiglitz's arguments through to their logical conclusions, it would be more efficient to pull out all troops and just bomb Iraq with money.
^^ Very good, and very sobering, article, Mr. Jack.
Not sure where to put this, but it deserves a nod:
Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death", was arrested in Thailand on Thursday and accused of seeking to buy weapons for Colombian rebels, Thai police said.
Bout, the target of an international arrest warrant and U.S. sanctions, was picked up at a Bangkok hotel after he entered Thailand on February 29. Police were searching for an associate.
Bout was attempting "to procure weapons for Colombia's FARC rebels", the Thai police said in an arrest report.
The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is fighting a four-decade old insurgency against the Bogota government.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bout in October 2006, seizing his fleet of cargo jets and froze other assets.
Good news indeed.
Bout is said to be the inspiration for the Nic Cage character in Lord of War.
Edit: there was a good long piece on him in one of the papers i read recently which i'm failing to find via google (but was either guardian or times). Not only did he sell weapons to all sides in everything, seems the CIA were still defending him and the govt agency that issued the warrant had to go behind their back.
Didn't the US use him and his teams in the early days of the Iraq occupation?
EDIT: Combat troops (combat troops something like 25% of US forces), mind.
Supply chain, innit. Logistics. Engineering. Cookery. Etc...
People who might look like this chap on the right:
Blackwater Worldwide faces a humiliating ejection from Iraq after the Interior Ministry said today it will not renew the private security firm’s licence to operate in the country.
The decision was taken because of a shootout in September 2007 involving Blackwater guards that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, a ministry spokesman said.
If implemented, the exit order will be a blow for the North Carolina-based company, which is contracted by the US State Department to protect the sprawling US Embassy in Baghdad and all US diplomats in Iraq.
It is unclear when Blackwater guards, who number some 1,000, largely former US military personnel headquartered in Baghdad's Green Zone, will be asked to leave and whether they can continue to carry out their duties in the interim.
Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf, the Iraqi spokesman, said: "The contract is finished and will not be renewed by order of the Minister of the Interior ... It is because of the shooting incident in 2007.”