Bloodless Coup

Bro,
I think in the coming years and decades, this may do more to transform the landscape of the Middle East than is apparent. The Iraqi Prime Minister is saying, outright, that it's okay to kill Americans. Americans don't belong here, so if you kill them we'll look the other way. He's just turned the US military into a bunch of outlaws in his country. If this is a moderate voice within the Middle East, this war of liberation may soon become a war between our culture and theirs, for we cannot allow this savagery to stand. It seems that's the way they're already playing, but our soldiers learn fast, even if our politicians are slow. How long will it be before our troops start shooting surrendering insurgents, when the insurgents know if they surrender they'll be able to go free and kill more of our troops (and our troops have figured out this trick)?

My bad, Dr. Baltar, didn't realize you wrote this one. Welcome back.

Ah yes, free, independent, "sovereign" Iraq - how fast did the guy who said this get fired? Hours? Minutes?

From an Iraqi perspective this actually does make a lot of sense. From an American perspective it doesn't. And creating what resembles security in the wake of an insurgency and sectarian violence often requires making the kinds of decisions that from a moral perspective would make some truly evil people blush. Of course it would be nice if the White House realized this - and even nicer if the president had realized this in 2002.

Bro,
It was very important for them to make this choice. If they continue down this path, we will have a much clearer conscience now at the point we take steps to protect our nation. There's a big difference between going to war with a nation that may be ruled by a crazy dictator and one that freely elects someone who'd let certain kinds of people (Americans, in this case) be slaughtered with no response from us. It's important they have the choice, to tell us what Islam means to them (and it seems they have, and it means killing the Americans). Now the choice is ours, as they proceed along the path they've been on all the while.

1. What choice have they made? This isn't set policy. 2. Uh, you are saying to was "important" - hundreds and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars and untold thousands of our lives important - so that now we can know how they REALLY feel? 3. What exactly do you think this means about how they REALLY feel? 4. Just who the hell is "they" anyway? That pronoun seems to convey a certain uniformity of opinion, and there are 20-something million people in that country.

Also, for the record - if you think the nation "feely elects" the prime minister I urge you to go back and read the political reporting on - well basically the last 3 years in Iraq. This is in many ways our creation and when it's not it is in many ways under our influence. But that certainly doesn't preclude it turning on us as it starts to wiggle out from under that control - something any Realist could predict was a realy possibility - and of course something many Realists did predict prior to President Bush launching the war.

Bro,
To believe one can control the actions of another is a fool's errand. But we can give another a choice so that their previously uncertain intentions may become apparent. I don't see a lot of Iraqis protesting this new policy, do you? As I said above, it's how they continue on this course, whether they continue to elect officials who govern in this way, will motivate the way which we choose to respond. What I do believe is that we need to rethink our catch and release policy of Iraqi insurgents and terrorists to Iraqi authorities. If they just let them go, then we probably need to either bring them to American custody, or simply not take them prisoner in the first place, since there's no reason to assume they won't show up the next day with a grenade launcher in one hand and a white flag ready to be waved in the other. The Geneva convention did not assume POWs would be released immediately after being taken prisoner, and I don't know of any country who has fought a war in that way, even the moral wars.

ok - so I repeat - given that you wrote this:

"To believe one can control the actions of another is a fool's errand. But we can give another a choice so that their previously uncertain intentions may become apparent ..."

do you sincerely believe the staggering costs of the war (which of course are very far from over) are 1) worth it and 2) the proper priortization of the taxpayers money and the services of our military who put themselves in harm's way to defend our country?

and to me this turn of events in your reasoning is really odd given how often you've espoused fighting for a free and sovereign Iraq - this (and much worse of course) were always foreseeable results of what you'd get with such an Iraq, so ... well I don't know it seems odd to discuss how we've got to fight and die for those freedoms - but then say they should have them if we don't like the way they are using them.

also, given the rest of your post - are you calling for a considerable increase in the number of US troops in the region? that would seem to be necessary. if so, where will those troops come from and how are you going to pay for them?

I'm beginning to consider this, and I wonder if this isn't considered well by the Iraqi PM. If they say they'll release anyone who attacks Americans, then Americans have to either put POWs in American prisons in Iraq (which the Iraqis may see as a violation of their sovreignty, or Americans would just let them go by handing them over to Iraq, or Americans would simply stop taking prisoners, executing on the spot anyone who attacks them even if they surrender. It may be that the Shiites want to pressure us to do this last option, because it eliminates their political opposition; if any martyrs are created, they're martyrs against the Americans and not against the Shiites; and simply the Shiites don't have to worry about the insurgents creating a mess by attacking Iraqi prisons as they've done before. This is a culture in which a person has their hand cut off for stealing, but they're willing to just let people go if they attack Americans? I wonder.

And, yes, I still believe the war is worth the cost, because we're directly addressing the problem of the Middle East. We're giving them freedom and political power within a civilized framework, giving them something to lose when they risk their lives attacking us.

"Civilized"? Uh-huh.

And two words - opportunity costs. You really think this is the best use we can put American taxpayers' dollars and American blood towards? Helping to pay for the pills of the elderly, healthcare for the poor, putting money to medical research, building the national infrastructure, expanding instead of cutting aid so Americans go to college - those are all inferior priorities to giving them "freedom and political power" (which is just wildly exaggerated - their power constrained by ours and their freedoms aren't going to be like ours at all). Interesting priorities you have.

Bro,
How about tell me the magic number you think is "enough" to pay for pills for the elderly, or the exact percentage based upon their income that is "enough" or the exact percentage of GNP that is "enough" for medical research, national infrastructure, blah blah blah. And where does that number come from, that is a solid source who's never been wrong when predicting what's "enough." There's always the possibility of spending more on these things, but when will I hear you say, "We've spent enough on pills for the elderly, now let's spend some money on fighting people who have no regard for basic human worth." I know you're more than happy to do that in America with oppressed minorities, but when will you say: "No more Zocor for you, Charlton Heston. We have other priorities, and you're right to a healthy heart will have to get in line behind the Kurds' right not to get disfigured by nerve gas."

you forgot one: how much defecit spending should go into misadventures overseas entered into on false pretenses all while cutting taxes?

i mean, i'm sure there's an alternative universe in which one can sustain a war effort while reducing taxes, but as of yet it's not something that's worked here. and if you think it's working now, i'm sure the chinese would agree -- they'd happily to tell you that, while their hands encircle our fiscal throat, they have no intention ever of squeezing, honest. and they may well not squeeze this decade or next, as long as we continue to let them do precisely the sort of freedom-hating things we're destroying iraq to prevent. why are you so unperturbed that while we're "solving" a non-imminent problem in iraq, we're getting bent over by iran, north korea, and china, and are in bed with a russian government that's looking more and more like the old boss every day?

morris, that there's no dollar-for-dollar prescription for making things better is a truism in matters of fiscal policy. to claim that there's any real doubt that bush's policies, here and abroad, have been ruinous is specious at best. i imagine in ten years, when the umpteenth subsequent president is still trying to dig us out from the various piles of s*&t in which bush has embedded us, you'll still be blaming clinton. but that won't make it true.

Moon,
I'm a little confused. Since we haven't been on the gold standard for decades, even if the Chinese did dump all their holdings of currency, why couldn't we just tell them to go screw. The only thing backing our currency is the faith that it means something, and while it arguably would trade much lower if they did as you suggest, if they did it with as aggressive an intent as you propose they would, we could just tell them to go screw, because it's not like they could make us give them property in exchange for currency without more than soft power. Yes, people may not want to invest in T bills for a long time thereafter, but you don't seem to get that with so much of their wealth invested in our T bills, they'd be screwing themselves as well. But then, it's been years since I took international economics, so maybe I'm confused.
And recall, for a moment, that although the tax rate is lower, tax receipts are higher. The economy is no longer in the recession where Clinton left it as he left office. And the war is going well, at least according to the terrorist. As they say, "However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance..."
Stay the course!

Uh Morris, just throwing this out there as a possibility you might want to consider - did it ever occur to you that the Zarqawi papers that the US military chooses to release to the press might be bits of disinformation aimed at trying to influence people (foreign and domestic). I mean I guess they could be legitimate. But there's also every possibility that they are a bit of political warfare/psy ops. I mean that's entirely the sort of thing the military and intel services are supposed to be doing (exaggerating our strength and their weaknesses).

And I urge you to go check out that memo that was covered in the Post and by Greg Mitchell Edior & Publisher if you think things are going well in Iraq. You know - the one from our embassy with our ambassador's name at the bottom of it. It paints a terrifying picture of what's going on in Iraq. And outside of you and Tony Snow and the Vice President I don't really ever hear anyone who disputes that things are extremely bad there right now. But maybe these are just "the last throes" - you know the long continued, years and years of 'em "last throes" and the militia are about to start throwing roses and other flowers at those working with the US instead of bombs.

i'm pretty sure telling holders of our debt to "go screw" would do more than just piss off those particular holders of our debt. but then i've never takan a course in international economics, so what do i know.

a foolish consistency!!!

Bro,
I agree it's possible these past Zarqawi memos could be psy ops to further the military's agenda. I also agree that stories released by the media could be to further their agenda. We've conducted hundreds of raids against insurgents and terrorists in the past weeks. Why is it so difficult for you to believe things are getting better, and time is on our side?
Moon,
One thing I'm sure their dumping their currency would do is raise the price of Americans buying Chinese products by quite a lot, and probably touch off another Buy American campaign.
Qui Gon's defiance, I sense in you. Need that, you do not!!!

Oh, yes, things are bad b/c NBC and CNN are making shit up - they are the ones who hate freedom.

Not.

I fail to see any evidence whatsoever that things are getting better - sectarian violence is up, death tolls are up, much of the country is controled by militias, freedoms (in the Western sense of the word) are declining with each passing day, Iran's power in Iraq continues to increase (which was always an abundantly obvious likely consequence of the folly of Bush's war) - the words of the president and vice president are nice words, but I fail to see them connected to any meaningful metric whatsoever that suggests things are becoming substantively "better" in much of the country.

How are they getting better nation-wide? That embassy memo shows lots and lots of ways in which they are getting worse. And I haven't seen anything to suggest that's going to change.

Regarding T-bills and foreign holders of American debt (NYTimes Select):

CHAPTER 1: THE NATION; Reasons To Worry by Niall Ferguson June 11, 2006

An analogous question for economists is whether the United States is capable of evolving out of its present excessive indebtedness. Or could the global economic environment change so drastically as to threaten, if not extinction, then at least decline relative to smaller, more dynamic economies?

{snip}

[O]n Sept. 7, 2000, the [National Debt Clock in Times Square] read: ''Our national debt: $5,676,989,904,887. Your family share: $73,733.'' That's when the clock was turned off, because, in those innocent days, it seemed as if the $5.6 trillion debt was set to decline, perhaps to disappear altogether. On that same date, CNN reported, ''Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore . . . outlined a plan that he says would eliminate the debt by 2012.'' The proposal was uncontroversial.

[snip]

Since becoming president, George Bush has presided over one of the steepest peacetime rises ever in the federal debt. The gross federal debt now exceeds $8.3 trillion. There are three reasons for the post-2000 increase: reduced revenue during the 2001 recession, generous tax cuts for higher income groups and increased expenditures not only on warfare abroad but also on welfare at home. And if projections from the Congressional Budget Office turn out to be correct, we are just a decade away from a $12.8 trillion debt -- more than double what it was when Bush took office.

[snip]

[B]y requiring larger interest payments, big public debts devour revenue that could be spent on other programs. They may crowd out private investment by pushing up long-term interest rates. They may also have a regressive distributional impact, transferring economic resources from taxpayers to bondholders or from future generations to the present generation.

It all depends how you measure the debt. If you exclude bonds and bills in the possession of government agencies and programs, like the Social Security trust fund, the debt actually held by private investors is less than $5 trillion. Economists commonly calculate the debt burden as a percentage of gross domestic product. Counting only the debt held by the public, that works out to around 38 percent of G.D.P., a major increase relative to 1981 but still modest compared with the years after World War II. What's more, the C.B.O. forecasts (albeit with the rosy assumption of annual growth close to 5 percent) that the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio will actually decline in the decade ahead, to perhaps as little as 34.5 percent -- even if today's lax budgetary plans are adhered to.

[snip]

[T]he federal government seems to have much larger unfinanced liabilities than official data imply. If you compare the present value of all projected future government expenditures, including debt-service payments, with the present value of all projected future government receipts, the gap is about $66 trillion, according to calculations by the economists Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters. That's almost eight times the size of the official gross federal debt.

American consumption has been the principal engine of economic growth in the world over the past decade. But the readiness of American households and politicians to borrow has an inevitable corollary: the United States has become the world's biggest debtor.

In almost every year since 1992, the gap between the amount of goods and services the United States exports and the amount it imports has grown wider. This year the current account deficit, which is largely a trade deficit, could rise as high as 7 percent of G.D.P., nearly double its peak in the mid-1980's. What results is a remarkable accumulation of foreign debt. Estimates of the net international investment position of the United States -- the difference between the overseas assets owned by Americans and the American assets owned by foreigners -- have declined from a modest positive balance of around 5 percent of G.D.P. in the mid-80's to a huge net debt of minus 20 percent today.

What this means is that foreigners are accumulating large claims on the future output of the United States. However the borrowed money is used, whether productively or not, a proportion of the future returns on U.S. investments will end up flowing abroad as dividends or interest payments.

Asian central banks in particular have been buying large quantities of dollars and dollar-denominated securities. Chinese purchases of U.S. bonds in 2005, for example, are estimated to have risen as high as 2 percent of our G.D.P., a very significant proportion of America's foreign borrowing. At first sight, the channeling of Chinese savings into American bonds seems bizarre. The average American has an income of about $40,000 a year and has, as we have seen, a personal savings rate of zero. The average Chinese earns around $1,500 per year but has personal savings of 23 percent of his income -- and is lending a large chunk of these savings, via the People's Bank of China, to the average American. The conventional explanation for this strange transaction is that the Chinese authorities need to buy dollar-denominated bonds to prevent their own currency from appreciating relative to ours. The logic is that China needs a weak exchange rate to ensure that its exports continue to flow into the American market.

Of course, it is not only the Chinese who have been engaging in the accumulation of dollars and dollar-denominated securities. [snip] Middle Eastern oil producers have also been running large trade surpluses, thanks to high oil prices, and investing at least some of the proceeds in the United States.

As a result, there has been an immense rise in foreign ownership of American securities of all kinds, but especially government bonds. Foreign ownership of the U.S. federal debt passed the halfway mark in June 2004. About a third of corporate bonds are now in foreign hands, as is more than 13 percent of the U.S. stock market. One analyst has half-seriously calculated that at the current rate of foreign accumulation, the last U.S. Treasury held by an American will be purchased by the People's Bank of China on Feb. 9, 2012.

To those familiar with the Latin American debt crises of the 80's and 90's, there's a case to be made that the United States is on the road to becoming a Latin American country.

[snip]

But the happy position of the United States is more like that of Britain in the aftermath of World War II, when a substantial part of its war debt was owed in sterling to current or former colonies. Because Britain borrowed in its own currency, it had control over the unit of account. As the pound slid from $4 to below $2 from the 40's to the 70's, its sterling liabilities were reduced by half in terms of the key postwar currency.

Could the dollar follow a similar downward path? It has happened before. Between March 1985 and April 1988, the dollar depreciated by more than 40 percent against the currencies of America's trading partners. As a fiscal strategy, dollar depreciation has much to recommend it. At a stroke, American exports would regain their competitiveness overseas and Asian imports would become more expensive, leading to at least some contraction -- though not an elimination -- of the trade deficit. Foreign creditors would take the hit, finding their dollar assets suddenly worth much less in terms of their own currencies.

So what's the catch? A sudden increase in the dollar price of American imports could stoke inflation in the United States. There is already some patchy evidence of an upturn in inflation. Whichever measure you use, prices are certainly rising at a faster rate now than they were two years ago, as are hourly earnings. As measured by the spread between conventional bonds and inflation-proof bonds, inflation expectations are also up slightly.

But is that really a catch? Not necessarily. Because higher inflation means that the real value of your debt ends up being reduced (in terms of the purchasing power of the amount that you owe) -- provided, that is, that your debt is not adjustable-rate or index-linked.

Alas, those are two really serious caveats.

It's a pretty safe bet that if a dollar decline shows signs of boosting inflation, the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. The credibility of the new Fed chairman would be on the line. Even a federal-funds rate above 5 percent might seem too low. Bear in mind that the federal-funds rate (the overnight rate at which the Fed lends to the banking system) has been going up for two years, from its nadir of below 1 percent in June 2004. Now ask yourself, Who has been most affected by this monetary tightening?

Two important categories of debtor spring to mind. First, there are the households with adjustable-rate mortgages.

[snip]

Yet the surprising thing is that the second category of debtor vulnerable to higher short-term rates can scarcely plead ignorance or naïveté. For it is none other than the federal government itself.

The protracted decline of long-term interest rates since the 80's has been a boon for an indebted government. Since 1990, the cost of servicing the federal debt has actually declined from 3.2 percent of G.D.P. in 1990 to 1.5 percent in 2005, even as the absolute size of the debt has soared. But that decline has been achieved partly thanks to the term structure of the debt -- that is, to the relatively short duration of the bonds issued by the Treasury, which has allowed the government to take maximum advantage of falling rates. At the end of fiscal year 2005, for example, fully a third of the federal debt had a maturity of less than one year, and the average maturity of the entire debt was just 57 months (down from 74 months at the end of 2000).

This was wonderful so long as interest rates were falling. But now that they have started going up, it creates a potential fiscal nightmare: big slices of the federal debt that have to be refinanced at higher market rates. And that creates a new source of budgetary red ink: rising interest payments. It turns out that George Bush has the biggest A.R.M. in the world.

The most important lesson to be drawn from the history of debt is this: It's not the absolute size of your borrowings that matters. It's not even the relative size in relation to your income. The crux is whether the interest payments you have to make are more or less than you can afford to pay. And that, in turn, is a function of whether or not the rate can move, whether or not your income can change and whether or not inflation can help you or hurt you. On this basis, both subprime American mortgage-holders and a distinctly subprime administration may find the months ahead more painful than they anticipated.

But then it's probably been years since Ferguson took international economics, too.

Moon,
I'm not quite sure what your argument is here. He talks about what I posted above, that if the dollar gets dumped by the Chinese, our goods become more competitive internationally and domestically. This of course leads to increase tax receipts which in the scenario you suggest would help us pay down the deficit. This hurts China because they sell so much to us. He argues that the reason China's investing in the US is to make their currency more reliable, and if that's the case they wouldn't dump our currency. Yes, foreign debt has gone up tremendously in accord with rising gas prices, that's where the vast majority of it comes from, but that's not debt like we owe other countries/people, it's trade debt, the amount the buy of our goods from the amount we buy of their goods, and this would decrease if the Chinese dumped our currency. The reason they refer to Gore on Sept. 7, 2000 is because it was uncontroversial before Sept 11, 2001 when our economy took a huge hit in the form of a couple of airplanes, and we realized (most of us) that reducing debt was less important than protecting American workers from terrorists (pre-9/11 mentality). I also have yet to actually be aware of a budget plan that's not been noncontroversial, ever (especially if politics is viewed in terms of who gets what, when and how, then the idea is on its face utopian). Yes, it's likely there would be inflation, at least in the short run. But that's like saying there will be a rise in unemployment, a good prediction for a psychic to make because it will almost inevitably come true at some point. Again, I'm confused as to your arguemt.
Bro,
Here it is again. How do you know that the embassy memo isn't psy ops? Well, the media is behind it, and it's not CBS, so maybe it's not a forgery. You're making the assumption that only the military is capable of forging documents when recent history shows that is not the case. Go back to who gets what, when and how. Does the media have something to gain by Bush's hallmark going badly? Of course, they get validation for "protecting" the American people from all those corrupt Mr. Smith goes to washington types, and they get to assert again their power at turning the American people against a President, so the next President will know better than to kick them around the way Bush does. Yet you still will not believe they might be the ones lying here. The only people who say good things about Iraq is everyone who's actually gone there without an investment in our defeat.

morris, you completely ignore the aspect of the argument that invalidates the idea that the others you cite paint a rosy picture. the government, like all too much of what's left of the American middle class, is completely beholden to interest rate fluctuations, and when they continue to rise in the face of inflationary pressures our debt service is going to skyrocket at the expense of our practical ability to pay down our debt. when a double-digit percentage of our GDP is going to debt service, something is very very wrong. hell, the projections in the article make even reagan look responsible.

as for greater tax receipts, a) that's administration fuzzy math for you, and b) if it's true, all it illustrates is that republicans, even given more money, cannot behave as responsibly with the public fisc as the democrats did, all empty rhetoric about shrinking government aside (and with bush it's worse than empty; it's out and out hypocrisy).

our government, like the rest of the country, arranged its finances as though it thought the ludicrously low interest rates would last forever. when the bill comes do, which will happen regardless of what china does, the government will just have to cut and cut and cut, and whose stuff is getting cut? not those who benefit from the tax cuts. no, the poor, who never saw a dime from the tax cuts, will bear the brunt, seeing less and less in the way of services.

debt reduction was "uncontroversial" because a) it's good fiscal policy and b) it was a republican issue first -- that is, until they had power and realized how much fun it is to tuck wads of cash into the breast pockets of the tycoons to whom they are beholden. now suddenly it's "controversial," because following through requires sacrifice. and in case you haven't noticed, that word's not in bush's vocabulary: the only people he's asked to sacrifice in four years of "war" are the children of the poor and the poor themselves, and of course he hasn't asked -- he's just exacted his pound of flesh and kept telling them their lives are better. go ahead and find out how many of his inner circle have kids in iraq who aren't there at the behest of a contractor and making gobs of money. go ahead and find out how many of his inner circle have lost a child overseas. go ahead and find out how many of his inner circle have children in public schools. add 'em all up, and if you reach the number ten please do let me know.

"How do you know that the embassy memo isn't psy ops?"

Are you COMPLETELY insane? Quite apart from that being an intra-government memo (yes parts of our government lie to other parts, particularly under this keystone cops executive branch), one note aimed at getting release to any of the "bad guys" (unless you hate Condi Rice's State Dept.), what could possibly be gained in political psychological warfare by the US Embassy in Baghdad noting that things have gone from worse to much worse in Baghdad.

You've got some very peculiar ideas from time to time - but this one deserves some sort of prize.

And I remain flabbergasted that you seem to think the media hates George Bush and is conspiring to bring him down. That's arguably not as ridiculous as your psy ops assertion, but the degree to which you think that is damn silly.

"The only people who say good things about Iraq is everyone who's actually gone there without an investment in our defeat." - And that's such a flat-out Coulter-esque lie that insults the beliefs of thousands of American who've risked their lives pursuing this ill-conceived war (honorable, patriotic, hardworking Americans in the military, the CIA, State, NGOs and yes even the media) that I'm not even going to address it.

Bro,
You ask:
"what could possibly be gained in political psychological warfare by the US Embassy in Baghdad noting that things have gone from worse to much worse in Baghdad."
If you're my enemy, and I tell you I have a weak stomach, where are you going to hit me? If our government says we're losing in Baghdad, that's where the insurgency will concentrate its attack. And since it probably has more American troops than anywhere else in the country, it's where we're strong, that's exactly where we want them to attack.
Take off your blinders. While FoxNews' internet site was giving up to the minute updates on the North Korean nuclear crisis, a long range missile on the launching pad with nothing but assurances from the same people who said they didn't have the tech for such a missile the first time they launched one in 98, empty assurances that they don't now have the tech to put a nuclear warhead on that missile and fire it at us or Japan, arguably the greatest threat this country's faced in more than a decade, CNN's website didn't have it at all. Are they just stupid? Or are they politically motivated by focusing on the torture and murder of American soldiers, focusing on how badly the war's going because to liberals struggle means failure, focusing on anything but the need for continuing vigilance against threats to our country from WMDs much worse than the 500 found in Iraq, on anything but programs Bush supported like the strategic defense initiative. Or are they just stupid?
And if the Americans in the military our so honorable and hardworking, why not post a single blog entry about that, instead of casting aspersions at the idea that they just may be winning, or knocking their great victories with posts about how they're making things worse (a la today's Zarqawi post). The one sure way not to make things worse is to do nothing, but optimists and visionaries want their lives to represent a little more than a fear they might make things worse.
Moon,
Were you out of the country on 9/11? Did you read the article where you quoted this guy as saying so much of the reason the debt is so high is because of the recession into which it fell after 9/11? And the reason the budget went way up is also, in case you were in Martinique or Guadalajara, that we gave billions and billions in aid to New York, we allocated money for a new department because (according to the 9/11 commission) a bunch of different agencies working independently weren't making the cut, and shortly after we went to Afghanistan, something that was "uncontroversial." Actually, all of those things that cost hundreds of billions of dollars were "uncontroversial." Yes, we've spent money fighting a war in Iraq that becomes with the newly released discovery of 500 WMDs in Iraq uncontroversial, proving that it wasn't Bush who lied, it was again, for the umpteenth time, Saddam that lied. The existence of the WMDs shows Iraq was a real threat to put these weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the Duelfer report details his intention to begin building more WMDs once the oil for food money bribed enough UN member states to end sanctions. Even if Saddam didn't give WMDs to terrorists, he himself was a grave threat as was proven by the transcript of a tape recording in which he told his advisors on the eve of Desert Storm to use germ warfare against us, the Israelis, and the Saudis if we went for Baghdad.
And the quotes from the article are absolutely your interpretation, because the quotes you cited do nothing more than refer to the possibility of growth at 5 percent as rosy. There was no talk of "skyrocket," my guess being that's because this economist isn't going to predict something unless he's sure that's what's going to happen. Even former presidential candidate Steve Forbes talked today about what great shape our economy is in. What your article actually says is that if growth meets its "rosy prediction," we'll have much less debt as a percentage of GDP in another decade.
In fact, some very bright people argue that the rising interest rates are not at all necessary, and that it is the Fed Chairman with an inflation phobia:

Since Bernanke's blunt talk last week, seven Fed governors have delivered a similarly hard line on inflation. Even though each of the Fed speeches have stressed that the economy is slowing, the message getting through to investors is unequivocal: The Fed is far more worried about inflation taking off.
Yet Washington economists don't see the threat of prices spiraling out of control, and thus are perplexed by the notion that aggressive tightening by the Fed is necessary.
"We have a strong growth economy with very little inflation--remarkably little considering what's happening to oil," says Alice Rivlin, the vice chair of the Fed's board of governors from 1996 to 1999 and a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
The economy doesn't have the ingredients for runaway price increases, argues Allan Meltzer, the founder of the Shadow Open Market Committee, a group that tracks Fed policy, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Money growth is slow, unit labor costs are falling and productivity growth is barreling along, he points out. "There isn't a sign of a long-term inflation problem."
[snip]
The Fed has a history of tightening too far, especially when there's a new guy in charge who is trying to prove his inflation-fighting mettle. Some critics argue that former Fed chief Alan Greenspan helped to precipitate the stock market crash of 1987 by airing his inflation concerns and raising the discount rate, a lesser-used tool that the Fed uses to guide interest rates.
A look at the historical numbers should dispel Bernanke's inflation fears, points out Reynolds, who argues that an annual inflation rate of 2.4% is near record lows. Before 1998, it had never been that low, and it averaged 4.7% from 1967 to 2005.
"He may be looking at the wrong numbers or he's not looking at them in the proper historical perspective," says Reynolds.

Oh my oh my oh my - you write "If you're my enemy, and I tell you I have a weak stomach, where are you going to hit me? If our government says we're losing in Baghdad, that's where the insurgency will concentrate its attack. And since it probably has more American troops than anywhere else in the country, it's where we're strong, that's exactly where we want them to attack" - it seems you get more bizarre with every single day. Uh, you don't think the bad guys know where our troops are deployed? They do. The notion that the US embassy will write a Iraq-is-collapsing intra-governmental note, in the hopes that it will be leaked, and then the bad guys wil FINALLY start attacking in Baghdad (you do realize they do that all the time and that's part of what the note was about, right?) - b/c that's where we're strongest - oy. I don't like to call you stupid, but that's just plainly stupid. If you actually wanted the bad guys to fight in a certain place (somehow I doubt you'd want them fighting in one of the places where THEY are strongest, but anyway) I can't think of sillier ways to try to direct their action than an than to seek to get THAT as the result of sending a classified intragovernmental memo.

As opposed to say a TV press conference (which the bad guys will clearly hear) discussing the supposed papers of one of the bad guys. That seems a much more likely place for psy ops (maybe a sadly obvious place for it - but at this point you've got to think we are trying all kinds of things).

And if you are right, well obviously every bit of paperwork the government sends to itself is now psy ops directed at some bad guy somewhere. No wonder this administration doesn't know what's going on - it's actively spreading inaccurate information to itself constantly in hopes that it will leak! I mean we don't need to get good intelligence to ourselves or anything.

And you continually just don't get the media at all. Uh, why isn't their coverage of possible missile launches on CNN? One - b/c it has not happened - there are not pictures of it - and most Americans aren't especially interested in watching pompuous talking heads discussing a non-event when they could watch American Idol. For the moment, it's just a possibility. There are things that interest the people more. When not much is going on that threatens anyone (or so they think), those include the goings on of the famous. So CNN covers celebrities. It's not anti-Bush. It's pro-ratings - like the media is generally.

Another key thing is that (this isn't the media's fault) it's becoming more clear every day in economics and psych research that people respond to losses more than they do to gains. Now for a time this could have actually resulted in President Bush getting vastly more friendly coverage than his predecessor b/c in covering "losses" (terrorism hits) they gave the president a wide range of opportunities to stand around with firefighters and the flag. And the president was oddly able to associate destruction and death in the US with symbols and arguments that made him look good to the people. But in the longer term, covering death and destruction (hurricane or terrorism or whatever) is likely to focus on things the White House gets wrong. That's not remotely partisan. It's about the media responding to basic biological characteristics humans have, simple things about what interests people and what they respond to. The media is antagonistic with every president. This isn't a bad thing necessarily. Presumably today, in our system of government, someone should be held responsible when something goes terribly wrong. But whether you think that or not, this isn't unusual to this presidency.

And if you think the media is partisan - why in the hell did they do all they could to crucify the Clintons?

Finally, regarding the Zarqawi post - hardworking does not equal "right"; and in no way am I casting aspertions on the soldiers who ably completed their mission - but it's possible that they were fulfilling a strategically flawed mission, and I don't see how it's unAmerican or whatever to raise that possibility. I'd think you'd want us to be thinking about how we can most effectively fight terrorists.

so when bernanke raises interest rates, as he's clearly signaling he intends to do for the next year or two, he'll be flying in the face of experts who disagree that it's necessary. fine. that should provide substantial consolation to those who lose medicare or social security or a tenable education for their children because the government's tied up paying service on its extraordinary debt. regardless, even now interests rates are not historically high. when bush decided to mortgage the country to pursue a pointless war and feed a decadent tax cut for those who didn't need it and won't spend it and to lump a bunch of dysfunctional agencies into one big dysfunctional agency that's no cheaper than the sum of its parts and even less effective he had to know, he was morally obligated to know, that however sunny the picture looked with historically low interest rates, it wasn't going to last.

and yet and yet and yet -- hmmm, closing corporate tax loopholes that cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars a year? can't do it. rigorously auditing the activities of independent contractors overseas to at least deter the widespread graft no one can dispute is occuring, largely at the direction of GOP cronies? can't do it. raising the minimum wage so people living hand to mouth can feed more money into the economy and elevate their standards of living? can't do it.

oh, and you've got a lot of nerve suddenly acknowledging the gravity of the north korea situation right now, after downplaying for quite a while the inexcusable, and if we're not careful catastrophic neglect of north korea by the administration, which chose to pursue nebulous potential future threats over a truly imminent one. why doesn't the press cover north korea more stridenly? because no one in the government wants to talk about it. instead, bush goes gallivanting around the middle east, in a distant cousin of his mission accomplished garbage, blithely pretending that he can be confident that an utter nutcase doesn't have a functioning and fueled ICBM programmed with the coordinates for Anchorage, Alaska. you want to see that covered? write the president, write a senator, and ask them to please, pretty please talk about the fueled missile in north korea for once instead of touting the agonizingly slow process of demilitarizing a bunch of destitute peasants stuffing gunpowded into coffeecans.