carrots.jpgPassing out a few carrots for some intriguing reporting and analysis:

– To Dan Froomkin, who highlights who reporters ought to talk to about the potential for an Iran attack by the US — and that most sane foreign policy/military experts think the Iran-attack crowd is loopy.

– To Roger Owen at The Nation, on Juan Cole’s analysis of Napoleon in Egypt…and similarities to current “leaders.” 

– To Jay Rosen, for an excellent analysis of Charlie Savage’s new book.  And to Charlie, for adding even more to the conversation.

– To George Packer at The New Yorker, whose scenes from Iraqi despair ought to be read all over the Beltway and beyond.  And to Wolcott, who made me laugh in a whole new way about Lieberman.

– To The Atlantic, which surveyed foreign policy experts about Guantanamo and got some very telling responses, including the fact that 87 percent of them think it has substantially hurt the US. 

– To Alan Kreuger’s op-ed in the WaPo about the 5 myths of terrorism. 

– A fantastic piece on war profiteering from Vanity Fair that I linked up last week, but this particular bit needs amplification:

That transfer of cash to Iraq was the largest one-day shipment of currency in the history of the New York Fed. It was not, however, the first such shipment of cash to Iraq. Beginning soon after the invasion and continuing for more than a year, $12 billion in U.S. currency was airlifted to Baghdad, ostensibly as a stopgap measure to help run the Iraqi government and pay for basic services until a new Iraqi currency could be put into people’s hands. In effect, the entire nation of Iraq needed walking-around money, and Washington mobilized to provide it.

What Washington did not do was mobilize to keep track of it. By all accounts, the New York Fed and the Treasury Department exercised strict surveillance and control over all of this money while it was on American soil. But after the money was delivered to Iraq, oversight and control evaporated. Of the $12 billion in U.S. banknotes delivered to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at least $9 billion cannot be accounted for. A portion of that money may have been spent wisely and honestly; much of it probably wasn’t. Some of it was stolen.

Once the money arrived in Iraq it entered a free-for-all environment where virtually anyone with fingers could take some of it….

If I wrote that in a work of fiction, it would get tossed back over the transom as wholly unbelieveable. The Bush Administration, with its usual craptastic attention to detail, strikes out again. With your tax dollars.  Heckuva…oh, forget it.

What’s catching your eye on the blogs or in the news this morning?  Let me grab another cuppa coffee and we’ll chat…

Related posts:

  1. Valuing Democracy: Iran, Iraq and the War Supplemental
  2. “Funding the Fund”… or Not: Debunking WaPo’s Pro-Supplemental Editorial
  3. The Next Big Taxpayer Bailout? IMF Could Get Hundreds of Billions for European Banks
  4. Blackwater Bribed Iraqi Officials After Nissour Square Massacre
  5. Torture: Obama Heeded Maliki on Abuse Photos, Says McClatchy; What That Says for Our Occupation