Jon Stewart Outs Cheney as an Iranian Double Agent and War Criminal

This is why Jon Stewart deserves a Peabody Award for journalistic excellence and why I, for one, am going to miss him when he leaves 'The Daily Show':

On Thursday night (04/16/2014), Stewart demonstrated why the Beltway Press should never lend credence to anything former Vice President Dick Cheney says, particularly about Iraq or Iran.

Here's my own transcribed transcript of the segment.

Cheney (on Iran):  "This is a totally radical regime; that is the premier sponsor of state terrorism in the world, and Obama's about to give them nuclear weapons. It's a...I can't think of a more terrible burden to leave the next president than what Obama's creating here."

Stewart:  "Really? You can't think of an administration that left a more terrible burden? Think hard. [Pictures of George W. Bush and Cheney on the screen] No wait. Think, if I can ask you, harder. Maybe you need a visual aid. Can you think of an administration that left?...can you?...all right.

"But that wasn't the worst thing he had to say."

Cheney:  "...if you had somebody as president who wanted to take America down, who wanted to fundamentally weaken our position in the world...reduce our capacity to influence events, turn our back on our allies, and encourage our adversaries, it would look exactly like what Barack Obama is doing."

Stewart: [mocking Cheney in a Burgess Meredith as 'The Penguin' voice from the old "Batman" TV series]: "Wah, wah. Is Barack Obama a traitor? Wah. I don't... Wah. I don't know if he's a traitor but...Wah...but he does a great impression of a traitor. Wah.

"But basically the vice president's point appears to be this: Anyone who strengthens the strategic position of Iran is, by definition, working to weaken the United States of America. So, I guess the formulation would be whoever strengthened Iran more would be the greater threat to America.

"Using Dick Cheney's own metric as our baseline can we uncover a greater threat to America than even Barack Obama? Well, we find out in tonight's installment of: 'The Jon Stewart Mysteries Presents The Case of the Iranian Agent!'

"Thank you for joining me in the library Mr. Vice President, represented here by a balloon with a frowny face painted on it.

"Vice President Cheney, you leveled some serious charges that Barack Obama has strengthened Iran. Is there anything else you can think of over the last, say, I don't know, 12 years and 28 days that could also be seen as fundamentally strengthening Iran's position in that region?

[Video clip of Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary]: "One of the consequences of that invasion of Iraq was ultimately to strengthen Iran's role and influence in the region."

Stewart [in Sherlock Holmes-style deer-stalker hat with Meerschaum pipe]: "Well, and who, sir, was responsible for that invasion? Who, sir? Here, let me look it up in my history books. [mumbles] ... By gum, it was you! [pointing at the Cheney balloon] It was you!"

"I take your reddened face as embarrassment. And if invading Iraq not only removed Iran's closest foe but complicated America's ability to actively countervail Iran's nuclear program [headline from 08/10/2005 Philadelphia Inquirer "...the Iraq quagmire has deprived the United States of the option of bombing their nuclear facilities."], well, in fact, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, by the end of your administration, Vice President Cheney, Iran had 20 times the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges as when you came into office. And that...could that not be considered handing Iran a nuclear weapon, sir? A conclusion so damning it could only be spoken through two different oral affectations.

"I see the smile and lines and topography has gone from your face.

"Yes, Dick Cheney, you took out Iran's enemies while giving Iran time to build up their nuclear program. But surely you could course correct this by just installing in Iraq another strong anti-Iranian government to take Saddam Hussein's place. As any America-loving vice president would do. What was your move, sir?"

[News footage from 07/29/2014 "Frontline"]: "In Baghdad, with violence growing, the Bush team began urgently looking for an Iraqi leader to unite the country and stop the fighting. A CIA officer at the embassy had a suggestion: a relatively unknown Shiite member of Parliament, Nouri Kamil al-Maliki."

Stewart [in Sam Spade-style fedora]: "And that's when Maliki walked in, and I decided to shift genres. Maliki, he was a heart-stopping dame—actually, a middle-aged Iraqi man—who called himself al-Maliki. He had a pair of get-away sticks that went all the way up from the floor to his pelvic region like a normal adult. Who was this brave future enemy of Iran?"

[clip from 06/25/2014 "The Lead with Jake Tapper", with Fareed Zakaria]: "For 25 years, this guy's been a hard-line Shiite sectarian politician. When he was in exile from Saddam Hussein's regime, he lived in Iran. He was funded by the Iranians."

Stewart: "For an American administration to replace Saddam Hussein with a man emboldened and indebted to our greatest regional enemy, according to Dick Cheney's own logic, anyone who trusted Maliki would have to be naive or deliberately trying to weaken America."

[07/29/2007 clip of Cheney on CNN's "The Situation Room"]: Wolf Blitzer: "Do you trust Nouri al-Maliki?" Cheney: "I do. At this point I don't have any reason not to trust him."

Stewart: "Do you? Well, it seems you're getting sweat on your brow. [misting balloon] It seems you're getting a little hot in here isn't it, Mr. Vice President. Strange! I find the temperature quite mild.

"Still not gonna' confess your disingenuous, utterly lacking in self-examination, ironic attack on the Obama administration? Well, I guess I'll have to give up. Guess I'll just have to go back and report to my superiors that I couldn't crack the case. Eh, what're you gonna' do?

[Stewart now doing a "Columbo" impression]: "I got just one more thing. One more thing, Mr. Vice President. I just can't get it out of my mind. You mentioned earlier there's a reason why you would never want an American president to deal with Iran, and you've thought so for quite some time. Isn't that true?"

[03/07/2006 C-SPAN clip of Cheney]: "Iranians have endured a generation of repression at the hands of a fanatical regime. That regime is one of the primary state sponsors of terror."

Stewart: "Wah. State sponsors of terrorism? So, you yourself would never do something or engage with a regime such as that for their benefit or perhaps yours even when, let's say, in 1998, you were CEO of a giant oil services company. What was the name again? Ah, wah, Halliburton was what it was called. Halliburton."

[06/23/1998 clip of Cheney with subtitles]: "We find ourselves these days, American firms, cut out of the action, in terms of anything that develops with respect to Iran. ... Unfortunately, as has been point out repeatedly in recent weeks, our government has become 'sanctions happy.'"

Stewart: "Wah. Very interesting. You, sir, were arguing for the United States to life sanctions on Iran so your company, Halliburton, could get contracts with this radical regime. Contracts worth millions of dollars. And pardon me if I'm impugning your character—I hate to do it—but what would you make of a man whose final act in the business world before joining the American government as vice president would be to enter into contracts with the number one state sponsor of terror just before leaving to become Bush's running mate. [on-screen screenshot of 10/09/2004 newspaper: "...before Cheney left Halliburton to become Bush's running mate...Halliburton Products & Services...opened a Tehran office in early 2000..."] Contracts that were only legal because you did them through a foreign subsidiary, Mr. Cheney.

"And then once you were in office, in gratitude for Iran's money, you hand Iran the greatest prize of all...Iraq.

"Isn't it you, sir, who is the double agent determined to bring America down? Isn't it you...[balloon releases]...He's getting away!...Damn you, Dick Cheney!"

This, my friends, is utter brilliance. Satire of a like that would make Juvenal or Swift proud. There's no one else (now that Steven Colbert's gone and excepting, perhaps, John Oliver) out there that can do this with such authority and humor. It's funny! And, frankly, it puts the Beltway media's journalism, which report Cheney's critical words about Obama but do little to put them in proper context, to shame.

And, yes, it sounds like a war crime!

I did the transcript for my own future benefit and for those of you who would rather read than watch a video. All its flaws are mine. For the rest of you, here's the full 10 minute clip. It's worth a watch.

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Occupy K Street!

I think it's pretty big news when the President of the United States announces that all American troops who have been entangled in an eight-year foreign adventure of his predecessor's doing in Iraq will be home for Christmas. There are still questions about the role of Blackwater/Xe and other military contractors, but this is the fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Obama which many of us felt should have come much, much sooner. I have recognized how institutional concerns and Obama's own trepidation in dealing with the military-industrial powers-that-be have hampered these efforts. But here it is. It is major news. I applaud it. What's important, however, is what the contenders for the Republican nomination for office think about it—which will inevitably be the focus of all the Sunday political talk-shows. Oh, and what Sen. John McCain (R. Loser) and Lindsey Graham (R. So Closeted) feel about it. One hopes the resources to support this misbegotten war-like adventure can be put to better use rebuilding our own economy.

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The Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Everywhere/Occupy Together let's call it a 'movement' (this cycle's Move On?) is standing pat. Occupistas are occupying all over the Western world. Were I a commander of forces, I would shift focus a bit, especially in Washington, DC. "Occupy K Street" should be the mantra. Yes, corporate/financial control of the economy and hoarding is causing increasing misery among the 99% of Americans (and others) who are not hedge fund, Goldman Sachs, BoA, etc. affiliated. Calls for austerity, such as cutting back Social Security or Medicare or Veterans benefits, while bankster profits soar cannot stand. But the instrumentality of this control of the economy is the undue influence of MONEY on the law-making and regulatory (and enforcement, as well) processes of government. Money and influence filters into Congress and the Executive through the law firms, PR, and lobby shops of K Street. Break this supply chain link—Occupy K Street—and you stand a chance of making real, long-lasting democratizing effects on our politics and our economy.

Speaking of banksters, Bank of America is once again engaging in the should-be criminal act of privatizing profits and socializing losses. It is attempting to shift $55 trillion of potentially toxic debt exposure to risky Merrill Lynch derivatives from its investment side to its depositor, FDIC-insured side. Glass-Steagall, anyone?

That being said:

'A recent study of the global economy by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich "combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations," New Scientist reported.[1] -- It confirms that "a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy..." '

Want to know what the top 50 organizations in this network are (using data as of 2007)?

THE TOP 50 OF THE 147 SUPERCONNECTED COMPANIES

 1. Barclays plc
 2. Capital Group Companies Inc
 3. FMR Corporation
 4. AXA
 5. State Street Corporation
 6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
 7. Legal & General Group plc
 8. Vanguard Group Inc9. UBS AG
 10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
 11. Wellington Management Co LLP
 12. Deutsche Bank AG
 13. Franklin Resources Inc
 14. Credit Suisse Group
 15. Walton Enterprises LLC
 16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
 17. Natixis
 18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
 19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
 20. Legg Mason Inc
 21. Morgan Stanley
 22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
 23. Northern Trust Corporation
 24. Société Générale
 25. Bank of America Corporation
 26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
 27. Invesco plc
 28. Allianz SE
 29. TIAA
 30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
 31. Aviva plc
 32. Schroders plc
 33. Dodge & Cox
 34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
 35. Sun Life Financial Inc
 36. Standard Life plc
 37. CNCE
 38. Nomura Holdings Inc
 39. The Depository Trust Company
 40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
 41. ING Groep NV
 42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
 43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
 44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
 45. Vereniging Aegon
 46. BNP Paribas
 47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
 48. Resona Holdings Inc
 49. Capital Group International Inc
 50. China Petrochemical Group Company
 * Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

Research project: Who are the Hill and State lobbyists for these firms? What are the trade groups and organizations they support? Who are their law firms? What are their PACs and Super-PACs and 501(c)(4) organizations? Who do they pay to wine and dine and entice your Representatives and Senators and regulators and their staffs with campaign donations and contributions to their own PACs? These are their instrumentalities in the halls of power. These should be OCCUPIED!

Occupy K Street!

War Is Hell

I ran across the following while researching my new novel:

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer reported tonight that: "The Army says that suicides among active duty personnel have doubled in recent years, and multiple deployments might contribute to that increase." Stacy Bannerman at Foreign Policy in Focus cites the following statistics from last year:

The suicide rate for army troops in Iraq is 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared to the overall Army rate of 11.9 per 100,000 between 1995 and 2002. This rate is higher than the rate for all branches of the military during the Vietnam War, which was 15.6, and higher than during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which had a 3.6 rate for all branches. See, “Iraq: Low Army Morale, High Suicide Rate,” Reuters, March 25, 2004.

Dana Priest reported similar findings in January of this year in the Washington Post:

Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed severe stress on the Army, caused in part by repeated and lengthened deployments. Historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has reversed in recent years. From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

Last year, twice as many soldier suicides occurred in the United States than in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've heard first-hand anecdotal reports from VA psychiatrists that the incidence of PTSD is likewise higher for Iraq and Vietnam vets than for WWII and Korean Vets.

I have a theory. Smarter people than I throughout Western history have proposed that war is only justified if it is "just". Just war theory has a long and storied pedigree. Its principles have been widely debated and can be summarized briefly:

• A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.
  
• A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.
  
• A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.
  
• A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.
  
• The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.
  
• The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.
  
• The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.
  

Why bring this in? Most agree that the allied intervention in the Second World War was justified by just war theory. The U.S. intervention in Vietnam less so. And the current Iraq (mis-)adventure even less. Neither of the last two undeclared wars were responses to existential threats—one was ideological (domino theory, etc.) and the second was (in my opinion) to open up markets for our oil and oil services companies and ensure the re-election of the wartime administration (the leader of whose father failed to preserve his presidency by pulling out of his 1991 adventure prematurely). The shock and awe Iraq attack did not redress the injury of 9.11.01.

Boys and girls, men and women are dying in the cause of an unjust war. They wonder why they are there; why their buddies are dying; why they are killing civilians and why civilians are killing them. In WWII, soldiers were killing Nazis and Japanese who meant to conquer them and destroy their freedoms and their way of life. Not so much in Iraq (or Vietnam). Pre-emption is not countenanced in just war theory. The 'full metal jacket' brainwashing effect on the fighters in Vietnam and Iraq fails to fully take because of the lack of moral justification or existential significance of the conflict; soldiers allow themselves to become killing machines and monsters for insufficient reasons. Their psyches revolt; their human(-e) sensitivities assert themselves. Their consciences refuse to die. The trauma of warfare is insufficiently anaesthetized. They become depressed. They commit suicide.

This is not to take issue with the idea that it is multiple deployments that are contributing to these increases in the incidence of PTSD and suicide. I'm all for science and direct cause-and-effect explanations. It's just a big-picture theory from my point of view, and it's going to play a part in the back-story and characterological motivation of the protagonist of my novel.

Random Thoughts

This was just too rich to pass up. The headline reads: "People of Lesbos take gay group to court over term 'Lesbian'." I guess Lesbosian just doesn't sound right. Lesbosite? Lesbiot? Lesbo?

What about Greek?

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The emoluments of power? "TROUBLED WA Opposition leader Troy Buswell has broken down in tears at a press conference and admitted he sniffed the chair of a female Liberal Party staffer." [Sorry, I couldn't help posting this one.]

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Good News! "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." Oh, wait. That was five years ago.

Footnote to the above: From a strategic point of view, it's long been my opinion that the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was the efficient cause of the fall of the U.S.S.R. Not the ballyhooed Reagan "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" rhetoric. They brought it on themselves by overreaching. Happens all the time. Strategic miscalculation on this order can bring down the economy of an empire. It seems to me the U.S. is now approaching the same point: GWB's adventure in Iraq is crippling the U.S. economy, not to mention sapping our moral strength. Does this augur change in America on the order of what happened under Gorbachev/Yeltsin? Who's to say? But it is important to pay attention. The fatuous rhetoric continues to deceive: "We're just in the mopping up and rebuilding stage." "Victory (however defined) continues to elude." " We've been so successful we can't pull out now." "If we pull out, all hell will break loose." "If we don't fight the terrorists over there, we'll have to fight them over here." "We're not bogged down in a quagmire, we just can't leave yet."

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Speaking of rhetoric: When you hear someone bashing a theory of justice as fairness as a "redistribution of wealth" in this day and age in the United States, they don't mean selling off the public holdings at bargain basement prices or giving massive tax breaks and incentives to cronies and corporate confederates which, in turn, deprives the rest of the society of social services, education, infrastructure, etc. No, they mean something else altogether.

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Here's a fascinating article by David Byrne from Wired magazine about the economics of the music industry. Funny story: some years ago I was taking my son to see a movie on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where we lived then. It was a weekday afternoon showing of "Babe", you know the talking pig movie. It wasn't the first time I'd been. (The kid loved it.) It was the first show of the day and there were maybe 20-25 people there. Anyway, I was first in line when they opened the theater and was standing downstairs at the popcorn stand and this guy behind me starts talking about the movie to his kid. With my back turned, I weigh in. "Oh, yeah. I think it ought to be nominated for Best Picture and not just Best Animated Feature." I turn around and smile and, of course, there's David Byrne. Then he says this: "Oh, I voted for it." We nodded politely.

btw: the guy's got a pretty cool website and blogs with some regularity.

I ran across this article while researching two separate ideas for blogging: 1) modes of publication for fiction (indy, small press vs. agented, mega-corporate; and 2) the place of popular musics such as rock, jazz, rap, country, world, folk, etc. in the pantheon/canon of high art (e.g., opera, chamber music, symphonies, ballet, etc.)—with the obvious analogy to the genre vs. "literary fiction" arguments. Look for them.

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10-Q: The Form of a Problem

Okay, here's how we got in trouble—

Every three months, all publicly-held companies are required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and make available to the public certain information about their financial performance. On the whole, this is a good thing. The price of shares on the stock markets is, theoretically and ideally, based on everyone having access to the same information when they make the decision either to purchase or sell. Trading on inside information, or 'insider trading', is what Martha Stewart was charged with (though she went to jail for lying to government investigators looking into those charges). Every year, companies must file what's known as a Form 10-K which details the companies' performance for the year. The idea is to provide transparency into the financial well-being of a company to prevent fraud in the trading of its securities.

As I said, that's all well and good, but with this admirable regulation has arisen a perverse set of incentives: the managers of the companies subject to regulation must provide positive short-run performance or the price of their shares will take a hit—as will their bonuses and, eventually, their job-security. Thus, they do things like selling off company assets or diluting equity or borrowing heavily or skimping on planning and Research & Development to fund current operating costs or, in other cases, relying on PR and misleading marketing to exaggerate their poor performance, or, in still others, using accounting tricks like taking certain charges off-budget so they don't appear in the main text of the financial forms.#

Do you see where this is going?

There are the same sort of incentives in U.S. politics. The Congressional cycle is two years, the Presidential cycle is four. There are annual budgets—though the oversight is, one suspects, hardly so comprehensive. After all, the Iraq invasion and occupation have been off-budget items since the inception, in effect concealing their true costs.

[T]he real scandal is Mr. Bush's own preference for financing much of the cost of the Iraq war outside the normal budget process. That is convenient for the administration, which does not have to count the money when it is pretending to balance the budget. But Iraq is not some kind of unexpected emergency, like Hurricane Katrina. It is a highly predictable cost... .

Moving the war's financing off budget is no mere technical distinction. For one thing, it subjects the military's spending requests to less careful Congressional committee scrutiny than they would receive during the usual budget process. More important, this fiscal sleight of hand makes it that much easier for the Pentagon to duck the hard choices it desperately needs to be making between optional and costly futuristic weapons and pressing real-world needs. NY Times, May 8, 2006

This is an old trick, but it still works. The President* managed to make his fiscal performance, dismal enough to begin with, look better than it truly was by an accounting sleight-of-hand. Taxes were cut: this was a political trick to fool us into believing the illusion. The fact is, though some were paying less in taxes (which go to fund measures for the public good such as infrastructure, security, government oversight and regulation), we are paying more for commodities (gold, oil, etc.) which are, for the most part, privately held. Profits in these sectors have been obscene. Crude oil prices are five times as expensive as they were when GWB took office. Do you think it's a coincidence that GWB was an oilman and that his VP was in the oil-services business? But that's off-topic. The larger point is the incentives in the system to make the government managers look good in the short term, with no thought for the long-term good of the country or its people. The CEO mindset.

Think back to the first invasion of Iraq. Pres. GHW Bush refused to pursue Saddam Hussein into Baghdad and ended the action early and before a prolonged occupation. Thus, when the presidential cycle rolled around again, he could no longer claim to be a 'war president' and rally the support of the American people. And, guess what, domestic issues took over and he lost. His second son, as dumb as many think he is, clearly learned his lesson. He extended his own invasion all the way to Baghdad and claimed to be a 'war president' at election time which, you can be sure, was just enough to eke out a highly-contested election against a fairly inept opponent (we won't go into the splitting of the opposition caused by Ralph Nader). He needed our troops to remain in Iraq just long enough to get him (re-)elected. It worked, but created the current quagmire. The short-term incentives outweighed the long-term consequences in the political calculus. And now we have to pay for it.

Fraud, expedience, short-term manipulation of information (e.g., labor and unemployment statistics, war costs and casualties, M3), asset foreclosures, privatizing the public weal, lack of long-term planning, heavy borrowing, currency devaluation: these all appear to be structural problems, perverse incentives in our system of governance which this particular administration has managed to exploit for the cynical purpose of gaining and remaining in power maugre the consequences.


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# Rather, they are buried in footnotes at the end of the document.

And now for something completely different...

A man counting the true costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq: This interview with and article about Nobel-winner Joseph Stiglitz is an eye-opener. Also, here.

He claims the current U.S. administration has significantly 'misunderestimated' and in fact deceived the public about the costs of its adventure in Iraq. A direct result in the U.S. has been the subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing credit crunch, the slow to negligible labor growth over the past seven years, and the approaching recession in not only the U.S. but the global economies. Apparently, he has a book coming out.

War, it turns out, may not be profitable. (But don't tell that to Exxon/Mobil, Haliburton, and such beneficiaries of the privatization of warfare as Blackwater.

This quote, in particular, leaps out: "This government will be gone in nine months; subsequent administrations, and generations, will have to pay it off."

One wonders, too, if Stiglitz's analysis includes the opportunity costs as well.

Why is this not getting widely and prominently reported in the U.S.?