US election: Republicans cut and run from the Iraq issue like rats leaving a sinking ship (after all, they don't want to go down with Bush)

Four pieces about Iraq today. One, all about the GOP candidates who are running from Bush's war like diarrhea from an elephant's steaming butt. Two, there are US troops who want us out of there now. Three, Halliburton is ripping us off in Iraq like stealing candy from a baby. And four, Prof. Juan Cole wonders whether it's good or bad to split Iraq in three. (He thinks it's bad, I think it's good, even if I have to put up with the fact that fucking windbag Joe Biden thinks it's good, too.)


As Vote Nears, Stances on War Set Off Sparks -- by ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON — For at least a few hours on Tuesday, President Bush had a chance to relive his victorious campaign of 2004, taking a break from a bleak Republican campaign season as he attacked Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts over the war in Iraq.

Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Bush’s opponent in 2004, is not running for office this year. But the president seized on what he said were Mr. Kerry’s disparaging remarks about the troops — and what Mr. Kerry insisted was a botched joke aimed at Mr. Bush — as he sought to make Mr. Kerry the face of the Democratic Party this fall.

In the process, Mr. Bush brought renewed attention to the war in Iraq, which he defended with vigor while campaigning in Georgia, at the very moment that a number of Republican Congressional candidates, following the advice of party strategists, were stepping up their efforts to distance themselves from the White House on the war as the campaign enters its final days.

“President Bush isn’t getting our frustrations — it’s time to be decisive, beat the terrorists,” Mike McGavick, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington, said in an advertisement that began running this week. “Partition the country if we have to and get our troops home in victory.”

In Rhode Island on Tuesday, Senator Lincoln Chafee ,a Republican struggling against a challenge from Sheldon Whitehouse, an antiwar Democrat, began a new television advertisement reminding Rhode Island voters, “I stood against the Senate and president and voted no” on the war.

In a debate a day earlier, Mr. Chafee indicated he would be willing to call on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down; Mr. Whitehouse has been pressing Mr. Chafee to do just that in his television advertisements. In Tennessee, Bob Corker, a Republican candidate for Senate, said it was time for a new plan and a change in leadership at the Pentagon.

In New Jersey, Thomas H. Kean Jr., the Republican challenging Senator Robert Menendez, has started a new advertisement that says he wants to “change the course in Iraq; Replace Rumsfeld.” In Indiana, John Hostettler, a Republican congressman, reminds voters in his latest advertisement that he voted against the invasion of Iraq because “the intelligence did not support the claim that there were weapons of mass destruction there.”

To date, none of the Republicans who have spoken out have called for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and some had expressed previous reservations about the war or opposed it initially. But their willingness to break so publicly with the White House in the closing days of the campaign — in some cases, with the active encouragement of the some of the party’s own strategists — is evidence of the extent to which they view the war in Iraq as a lethal issue this fall.

It is especially striking because Mr. Bush has defended the war, and attacked Democrats over it, with increasing force in the last several days.

The mounting death toll in Iraq over the last month and apparent differences between the United States and the Iraqi government over how to proceed have given Democrats new opportunities to criticize Mr. Bush’s handling of the conflict and make the case that electing a Democratic Congress is the first step toward finding a solution.

Across the country, Democrats are broadcasting television advertisements that feature battle scenes and photographs of their Republican opponent with Mr. Bush as they call for sharp changes in the Iraq strategy.

“We have certainly advised candidates to not appear that they are marching in lock step with the administration in terms of how the Iraq war is being conducted,” a senior Republican Party Senate strategist said, insisting on anonymity in exchange for disclosing political advice being given to candidates. “If you aren’t speaking out against the way that this war has been conducted, you are dead in the water.”

“The candidates have been in a tough position for some time,” this party official said. “The way that has been enunciated before — stay the course versus cut and run — any changes to that are certainly welcome.”

In attacking Mr. Kerry and defending the war, the White House clearly made the calculation that achieving what has been its main strategic goal this year — firing up a dispirited conservative base — would outweigh any risk that might come in spotlighting a war that Republican Party officials said had become a huge burden for its candidates. The White House took the unusual step of releasing advance excerpts of Mr. Bush’s attacks.

In his remarks in California on Monday, Mr. Kerry said: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Mr. Kerry said that he botched a joke that his aides said had been prepared as follows: “Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”

Mr. Bush, speaking to a cheering crowd at a campaign rally late Tuesday afternoon in a half-empty arena at the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry, said Mr. Kerry had insulted the intelligence of Americans troops.

“The senator’s suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting, and it is shameful,” he said. “The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave, and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.”

Mention of Senator Kerry’s name drew boos, which were amplified after Mr. Bush quoted his remarks.

Mr. Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, called a news conference in which he accused Mr. Bush of twisting his words for political gain. “The White House’s attempt to distort my true statement is a remarkable testament to their abject failure in making America safe,” he said. “It’s a stunning statement about their willingness to reduce anything in America to raw politics.”

Some Democrats were quick to distance themselves from the man who had been their standard-bearer just two years ago.

“This is an example of politics at its worst,” said Scott Kleeb, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Nebraska. “Many of us have serious concerns over the current situation in Iraq, but no one should question the intelligence and dedication of our troops. Senator Kerry’s remark was disrespectful and insulting.”

Still, at least some of the students who attended Mr. Kerry’s speech at Pasadena City College said they did not think the senator was belittling troops.

“I don’t think he was saying our soldiers are dummies,” said Natalie Courtney, 21, the student body president, who said she was an independent. “I think he was saying you have to protect yourself. The current government does not have our best interest in mind. Don’t let the government lie to you.”

But Charles Huang, 19, a sophomore who described himself as one of the few conservatives at the college, said he was offended by the comment and thought Mr. Kerry did owe American troops an apology.

“I was kind of offended that someone would say that,” Mr. Huang said. “I think he was trying to crack a joke, but it was inappropriate.”

The contrast of Republican candidates distancing themselves from the White House even as Mr. Bush defended his policy again on Tuesday — “We will fight in Iraq and we will win in Iraq,” he said to cheers in Georgia — reflects what Republican Party officials said was a pragmatic message they were sending to candidates: do whatever it takes to win.

In one sign of the deteriorating situation for Republicans, Mr. Bush is now expected to fly to Kansas this weekend to campaign on behalf of a Republican incumbent, Jim Ryun, who just a month ago was not considered endangered.

“Whatever they feel they’ve got to do to move their numbers, they have got to do,” said one senior Republican Party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in exchange for talking about party strategy. The official added that the White House believed it was better to have Republican candidates complaining than to have to deal with a Democratic Congress in January.

But asked about the advertisement by Mr. McGavick, the Republican candidate for Senate in Washington, a senior White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss political strategy, said, “That’s not the message we’d be running.”

Elliott Bundy, a spokesman for Mr. McGavick, said that the White House had not complained about the advertisement and that Mr. McGavick had to address Iraq head-on, given the public opposition to the war. “Iraq is the No. 1 issue, and you are fooling yourself if you think it isn’t,” Mr. Bundy said. “Even Republicans who think the mission is worthwhile, they’re frustrated and the president doesn’t seem to get it all the time.”

On Tuesday, one week before Election Day, millions of dollars were being injected into the most competitive races in the country. Both sides were carefully tracking the day-by-day spending of their rivals and outside groups.

With a flurry of polls as their guide, Republicans redirected resources on Tuesday, pulling back on races in Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania in hopes of shoring up seats elsewhere. The largest infusion of money was reported in Missouri, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia.

(John Broder contributed reporting from Perry, Ga., Carolyn Marshall from San Francisco and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.)


2. Grass-Roots Group of Troops Petitions Congress for Pullout From Iraq -- by Ann Scott Tyson/Washington Post

More than 100 U.S. service members have signed a rare appeal urging Congress to support the "prompt withdrawal" of all American troops and bases from Iraq , organizers said yesterday.

"Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home," reads the statement of a small grass-roots group of active-duty military personnel and reservists that says it aims to give U.S. military members a voice in Iraq war policy.

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of American military forces and bases from Iraq," it reads. The group, which aims to collect 2,000 signatures and deliver the message to Congress in January, is sponsored by antiwar activists including Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out.

The unusual appeal -- the first of its kind in the Iraq war, organizers say -- makes use of a legal protection afforded by the Military Whistle-Blower Protection Act, which provides that members of the military, acting in their capacity as citizens, can send a protected communication to Congress without reprisal.

"Just because you put on the uniform of our country doesn't mean you've given up your rights as a citizen," said J.E. McNeil, a lawyer for the group and executive director for the Center on Conscience & War, a Washington organization that protects the rights of conscientious objectors.

But the service members can exercise this right only while off duty and out of uniform, and they must otherwise make clear they are not speaking for the military. In addition, they cannot say anything disrespectful about their commanders, including the president, McNeil said.

Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto of Atlanta was the first service member to sign the appeal.

"I hear discussions every day among my shipmates about the war in Iraq and how it doesn't make any sense at this point," said Hutto, who is based in Norfolk and served from September 2005 until March on a ship off Iraq's coast. "There is no victory in sight, and war is still inevitable." He said he opposes the war because of its human and economic tolls, adding that the billions of dollars should be spent on jobs and education at home.

Marine Corps Sgt. Liam Madden, 22, served in Iraq's restive Anbar province from September 2004 until February 2005 and found his opposition to the war intensified after he returned to the United States. "I don't think any more Iraqis or Americans should die because of the U.S. occupation," he said, expressing disappointment that Iraqi elections in January 2005 did not lead to a decline in violence.

"I think some things are worth fighting for, I just don't feel Iraq is one of them," said Madden, of Bellows Falls, Vt. The Quantico-based Marine plans to leave the service to attend college in January.

Madden said he and Hutton met and learned of the vehicle for expressing their views to Congress when they attended a lecture at the YMCA in Norfolk by David Cortright, the author of "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War."


3. Halliburton Motto: It's Cost Plus, Baby -- by Evelyn Pringle

Halliburton's contracts for work in Iraq are what's known as cost plus contracts, meaning that after all the costs for labor, materials and other expenses are added together, the company makes its profit based on a percentage of that total.

It certainly does not take a financial genius to figure out that under the terms of such a contract, a company has every motive in the world to increase the costs of every project to increase profits.

Since the minute Dick Cheney authorized the no-bid contracts for Halliburton, the granddaddy of war profiteering has been ripping off American tax payers left, right, and center through the use of these cost plus contracts, and another clear-cut profiteering scheme was recently revealed in testimony at a Senate Democratic Policy Committee hearing.

On September 18, 2006, Julie McBride, a former Halliburton employee with the company's Morale, Welfare & Recreation Department (MWR) in Iraq, testified that "the mantra at Halliburton camps goes, 'It's cost plus, baby.'"

Ms. McBride was hired as an MWR coordinator in Camp Fallujah at facilities that organize recreational activities for off-duty troops.

The two MWR facilities she coordinated were a fitness center and an Internet cafè. The fitness center had gym equipment, pool and ping pong tables, video games, and a large room for movies, fitness classes and dances, and the Internet cafè housed telephones, computers, and a library.

At Camp Fallujah, she testified, she became concerned about several Halliburton practices and especially with the procedures used to compile the head count for the MWR Department.

"Funding for the MWR Department," Ms. McBride stated, "was evidently based, in part, on the head count that Halliburton reported."

She explained that to obtain a head count, each off-duty soldier who entered the fitness center or the Internet cafè had to sign in, and that the number of soldiers on the sign-in sheet was referred to as the "Boots in the Door" count.

She then testified that she and other MWR employees were directed to use a specific methodology to intentionally inflate this head count to run up costs, and described how it worked.

"To begin," she told the panel, "each hour, on the hour, Halliburton staff were instructed to record the number of soldiers in each of the five rooms of the fitness center, and in the Internet cafè library."

"In addition," she said, "each person who used any equipment in the fitness center was required to sign a form."

"This included balls, ping pong paddles, pool cues, board games, video games, etc.," she noted.

"Further," she testified, "a record was kept of the number of troops who attended fitness classes or other activities."

At the end of each day, she said, Halliburton instructed MWR coordinators to prepare a situation report, or "sit rep," to record what was purported to be the MWR head count for the day.

"To inflate that figure," Ms McBride explained, "the coordinators began by adding together the "Boots in the Door" count, and the hourly totals for each room in the fitness center throughout the day and in the library."

"For example," she said, "I was present in Iraq on February 27, 2005, when the "Boots in the Door" count at the MWR facility in Fallujah was about 330."

"The hourly count that day," she noted, "for each room was over 1,300."

"These totals were then combined for a fitness center head count in excess of 1,600," she stated, "or five times the actual number of troops that came into the facility."

On top of that she said, Halliburton would often add the number of troops who attended a fitness class or activity, even though each person had already been counted when he or she came in the door, and counted a second time in the hourly head count.

In addition, she testified, they would often add on the total number of equipment items that were checked out that day and sometimes they would even add the number of towels checked out by the troops.

"One day in February 2005, for example," Ms McBride told the panel, "179 towels were added into the head count."

On another day in January 2005, she said, they added 240 bottles of water used by the troops that day.

"Sometimes," she testified, "they used a sum total for the head count that was higher than the "Boots in the Door," hourly room counts, activity count, equipment count, and towels count combined."

After adding together all of the numbers to arrive at a "sum total," she said, coordinators were instructed to throw away the original "Boots in the Door" figure and the larger total was then designated as the head count for that day and emailed to Halliburton administrators who compiled the numbers for all of the MWR facilities in Iraq.

"There are many other Halliburton MWR coordinators who can verify this procedure," she told the committee.

Ms. McBride went on to describe how the fraudulent head counts are used to generate millions of dollars in unearned profits for the company by running up costs. "By inflating the number of users," she said, "Halliburton can rationalize a greater need for facilities, equipment, staffing and administrators than actually exists."

"The additional staffing," she said, "does not benefit the troops, but it does benefit Halliburton."

"Under its contract," Ms McBride points out, "the more facilities, equipment, staff and administrators Halliburton can show a need for, the more profit Halliburton makes."

She said that she also watched Halliburton employees use their control of the MWR and dining facility requisition procedures to requisition many items for their own personal use, by claiming that the items were for the troops.

"I have personally observed," she said, "cases of soda, stacked on top of each other in Halliburton administrative offices, which Halliburton employees obtained this way."

She pointed out that the employees not only drank soda free but they also generated more undeserved profits for Halliburton by running up the cost of supplies.

"By contrast," she told the committee, "US soldiers who make a quarter as much, or less, must go to the PX to purchase their soda with money from their own pockets."

Ms. McBride also described how Halliburton employees exploit requisitions to obtain luxuries that are not afforded to the troops. "One example of this," she said, "was a Super Bowl party, for Halliburton employees only, at taxpayer expense."

According to Ms. McBride, Halliburton requisitioned a big screen TV and lots of food for employees and thus, under the cost plus contract, the company even made money off its private Super Bowl party.

Following the party, she said, the Halliburton employees arranged a live television connection for the big screen TV so that they could watch more football games.

She told the committee that many Halliburton employees did not seem to care about the soldiers and often ignored troop requests, or treated them like an annoyance.

"Those same employees," she said, "indulged their own whims at taxpayer expense."

She also described methods used by Halliburton to discourages employees from speaking out about these issues. "It's not easy to stand up to Halliburton," she told the committee.

"After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud," Ms. McBride said, "Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion."

She said her property was searched, and she was specifically told that she was not allowed to speak to any member of the US military. "I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country," she said.

In concluding her testimony, Ms. McBride expressed her admiration and devotion to the US troops in Iraq as well as her purpose in testifying before the committee.

"During my time at Camp Fallujah," she said, "I came to love the young men and women in the military, who serve our country so well."

"It was an honor for me to help them in any way," she stated.

"I will never forget their kindness," she said, "and their courage has inspired me to speak out now on their behalf."

Democrats have promised to end Halliburton's war profiteering in Iraq as soon as they take control of Congress, and hopefully tax payers will hold them to it.

(Evelyn Pringle is a columnist for YubaNet.com and an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America.)


4. Partitioning Iraq
Would dividing the country decrease ethnic infighting or lead to more fighting and inflame the Middle East?
By Juan Cole/Salon.com

The possibility that ethnic rivalries may break Iraq into three pieces has emerged as an election issue in U.S. politics. Last week, Bush administration spokesman Tony Snow branded any plan for partition a "nonstarter." Other politicians, however, are not so sure. Both Republicans and Democrats have endorsed a loose Iraqi federation of three equal parts, and some are even campaigning on the idea. Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford of Tennessee and Democratic House candidate Ted Ankrum of Texas are among those who have touted versions of partition on the stump. What are the pros and cons here, and what explains George Bush’s die-hard opposition?

The most determined opponents of the creation of regional confederacies in Iraq are Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Turks fear that if there is an independent Kurdistan in Iraq's north, it will become a magnet for Turkey's own substantial and fractious minority of Kurds. Saudi Arabia, which adheres to the ultra-strict Wahhabi Sunni school of Islam, has poor relations with Shiite Iran, and traditionally had severe tensions even with its own Shiites, who form perhaps 10 percent of the Saudi population. It objects to a Shiite super-province right next door in Iraq's south.

It is likely in order not to ruffle Turkish and Saudi feathers that the Bush administration so firmly opposes all partition plans. Turkey, a NATO ally of Washington, has been even more vocal and critical than Saudi Arabia about the Iraq imbroglio. But Bush and Cheney are especially attentive to Saudi concerns. Like Riyadh, they would view an autonomous Shiite super-province, which could easily fall under the gravitational pull of Iran, as highly undesirable.

Within Congress, however, the temptation to indulge Iraq's warring factions in their desire to divide the country has grown. The most prominent proponent of carving Iraq into three major ethnically based provinces, with regions for the Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites under a weak federal umbrella, is Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware. The idea has now been adopted by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. She told the Texas press last week, "Yes, it would be hard to do, but it would be worth trying ... People say, 'Well, that would balkanize the country.' Well, things are pretty stable in the Balkans right now. It's looking better than Iraq."

The senators believe that as the conflict in Iraq continues and sectarian violence mounts, trying to make Iraq’s battling ethnic groups cooperate with one another in multiethnic provinces has begun to look like a mistake. But surely it is the souring of the U.S. electorate on the war and the need of election campaigns to sketch out distinctive positions and realistic solutions to the crisis that in some part impels U.S. politicians to turn to this desperate expedient.

Within Iraq, Biden and Hutchison are echoed by the Kurds and by Shiite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). In a public sermon on Tuesday, al-Hakim, the head of the largest bloc in Parliament, advocated a Shiite provincial confederacy in the south that would unite eight or nine largely Shiite provinces into a federal region. He said that such loose federalism "does not spell partition." Addressing his followers at a mosque in Baghdad on the Eid al-Fitr, the celebration of the breaking of the Ramadan fast, al-Hakim said, "everyone should be reassured that we are supporters of the unity of Iraq and will stand against any plan for partition."

Al-Hakim went on, however, to condemn a strong central government as inherently tyrannical. He also pointed to history as support for his plan. He said that under the Ottoman Empire, Iraq had consisted of three big provinces, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. What he did not say was that what is now Iraq was not a nation-state then but part of a large empire, and that even the Ottomans ruled Mosul and Basra through Baghdad. The three were not equal as provinces.

Al-Hakim’s scheme for a southern Iraqi super-province, which some have called "Sumer," after the ancient civilization of southern Iraq, is vehemently opposed by the Sunni Arab minority, the recruitment pool for the former ruling elite. Sunni Arabs lack much in the way of petroleum or gas in the areas where they predominate, and they fear that the Shiites will monopolize the vast Rumaylah oil field and other fields yet to be discovered if they have their own semiautonomous region.

The young nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also rejects this plan in favor of a relatively strong central government. The wily al-Hakim, however, outmaneuvered both al-Sadr and the Sunnis in early October and rammed through Parliament a law authorizing the formation of the southern regional government. He scraped together a coalition of members of his own party, weaker factions of other Shiite parties, independents and Kurds to gain a bare majority of 140 out of 275 votes.

The Kurds supported al-Hakim, presumably because the creation of a Shiite regional government modeled on their Kurdistan (which groups Irbil, Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah) helps legitimate the idea of regional confederacies and protects Kurdish gains in greater self-determination. The Kurds have been a prime mover in Iraq’s march toward decentralization, and they probably would not mind much if the Sunnis and the Shiites did establish their own regions.

The biggest foreign backer of al-Hakim’s scheme, meanwhile, is the Iranian regime. A southern Shiite "Sumer" region with partial or complete autonomy would inevitably, Iranian leaders believe, fall into the orbit of Shiite Iran. And that prospect is particularly alarming to the Saudis and the United States.

Last year, the New York Times quoted Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, saying that ‘"the main worry of all the neighbors" was that the potential disintegration of Iraq into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish states would "bring other countries in the region into the conflict." In particular, he worries about Iran. He told the Council on Foreign Relations last fall, "We fought a war together to keep Iran out of Iraq after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait. Now we are handing the whole country over to Iran without reason." He was referring to the domination of Parliament and 11 of the country’s provinces by Shiite fundamentalist parties, especially the Iran-backed SCIRI.

Last week, with the possibility of partition becoming more likely, the Saudis attempted for the first time to intervene in the Iraq crisis in a major way. They hosted a conference in Mecca of Sunni and Shiite clergymen from Iraq. In a historic achievement, the Saudis persuaded their guests to issue a joint fatwa, or religious legal ruling, that it is impermissible for a Muslim to shed the blood of another Muslim. They declared that the difference between Shiites and Sunnis was merely a matter of personal opinion and did not rise to the level of a dispute about first principles.

The Saudis hoped that, through this conference, they could begin a process whereby Sunni and Shiite reprisal killings in Iraq could be halted. The tit-for-tat sectarian violence is the main reason many Iraqis have begun taking the idea of partition seriously.

But aside from the selfish interests of all the political actors inside and outside Iraq, as a practical policy, partitioning Iraq is too risky. It would probably not reduce ethnic infighting. It might produce more. The mini-states that emerge from a partition will have plenty of reason to fight wars with one another, as India did with Pakistan in the 1940s and has done virtually ever since. Worse, it is likely that if the Sunni Arab mini-state commits an atrocity against the Shiites, it might well bring in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They in turn would be targeted by Saudi and Jordanian jihadi volunteers.

A break-up of Iraq might not stop at Iraq’s borders. The Sunni Arabs could be picked up by Syria, thus greatly increasing Syria’s fighting power. Or they could become a revolutionary force in Jordan. A wholesale renegotiation of national borders may ensue, according to some thinkers. Such profound changes in such a volatile part of the world cannot be depended on to occur without bloodshed. The region is already racked by the Arab-Israeli conflict and the struggle between secular and religious politics.

If Iraq does sink into long-term instability, it will not hold the world harmless. With two-thirds of the globe’s proven petroleum reserves and 45 percent of its natural gas, the Persian Gulf hinterland of Iraq is key to the well-being of an industrialized or industrializing world. Long-term political instability in this region could drive petroleum prices so high as to endanger the world economy.

Ironically, those who plotted the Iraq war as a guarantee that the new century would also be an American one may well have put U.S. energy security in such question, and so weakened the dollar, as to raise the question of whether U.S. power has been dealt a permanent setback. Americans should pray that Iraqis heed the fatwa issued in Saudi Arabia late last week, forbidding inter-Muslim bloodshed.