Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: A Novel Approach to Politics
ABC News's political blog, "The Note," points out this week that Paris Hilton is issuing policy statements while John McCain nominates his wife for a topless beauty contest. The world's turned upside down. Who could blame a person for thinking that chronicling such oddness is beyond the skills of simple journalists? This is a job for the novelists....
... Finally, here's one to send Ayn Rand spinning: The White House projects next year's federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion, and that's not counting a possible $25 billion bailout of mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or the total costs of fighting in the Middle East, largely kept in the bottom drawer where they're hard to find. Yet this week, our Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that by year's end, the Iraqi government - the regime in power because we put them there - may have a budget surplus as high as $79 billion.
Iraq, as in "war-torn" Iraq. A surplus! Seventy-nine billion after we've poured $100 billion a year into that country and more than 4,100 American lives - so far.
Seventy-nine billion based on the record prices we're paying at the gas pumps, and they're not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and housing, making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005 and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10 percent of the Iraqi budget went toward reconstruction of their own country, which means that, once again, American taxpayers have been picking up the slack - $48 billion US allocated for reconstruction costs since we rolled into Baghdad more than five years ago.
By the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Admittedly, a lot of those billions doubtless line the pockets of American contractors who've done little if any of what they were hired to do - and endangered Iraqis and our own troops with shoddy, dangerous workmanship. But remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress back in 2003, before the war? "We're dealing with a county that can really finance its own reconstruction," he said, "and relatively soon."
Remember, too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq - you break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as "surplus."
Read entire article at Truthout
... Finally, here's one to send Ayn Rand spinning: The White House projects next year's federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion, and that's not counting a possible $25 billion bailout of mortgage banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or the total costs of fighting in the Middle East, largely kept in the bottom drawer where they're hard to find. Yet this week, our Government Accountability Office issued a report concluding that by year's end, the Iraqi government - the regime in power because we put them there - may have a budget surplus as high as $79 billion.
Iraq, as in "war-torn" Iraq. A surplus! Seventy-nine billion after we've poured $100 billion a year into that country and more than 4,100 American lives - so far.
Seventy-nine billion based on the record prices we're paying at the gas pumps, and they're not spending it on rebuilding, on getting their electrical systems back on the grid, constructing schools and hospitals and housing, making sure everyone has food and clean water. Between 2005 and 2007, the GAO report says, only 10 percent of the Iraqi budget went toward reconstruction of their own country, which means that, once again, American taxpayers have been picking up the slack - $48 billion US allocated for reconstruction costs since we rolled into Baghdad more than five years ago.
By the way, that includes $33 million for a new hotel, office complex and shopping mall at the Baghdad airport. Admittedly, a lot of those billions doubtless line the pockets of American contractors who've done little if any of what they were hired to do - and endangered Iraqis and our own troops with shoddy, dangerous workmanship. But remember what former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress back in 2003, before the war? "We're dealing with a county that can really finance its own reconstruction," he said, "and relatively soon."
Remember, too, what Colin Powell told President Bush before we invaded Iraq - you break it, you buy it. Julius Caesar came, saw and conquered. George W. Bush broke and bought, and we just keep paying, in money and blood, while billions of oil profits pile up in Iraq as "surplus."