Yahoo! News – Defying Bush, Senate Votes to Make Iraq Pay Back Loan
I tend to agree with the administration that making a significant amount of our aid to Iraq in the form of loans is a bad thing. It makes it look like we have roughed them up, and are now shaking them down. Not the sort of thing that is going to help our efforts in Iraq or elsewhere.

It bothers me though that most of the coverage of the loan clause ignores an important condition, namely that the loans will become grants if 90% of foreign debt against Iraq is forgiven. Perhaps this is unlikely, but it is, in general, a good thing to try to make happen. Ignoring the fact that compliance would make Iraq’s debtors into joint benefactors in its reconstruction, forgiving the debt is the right thing to do. These countries, and their various private lenders, were lending money to Sadam’s regime. Sadam’s regime is gone now, why should the Iraqi people, whom it exploited, be expected to pay its debts? And even if they should, why should they be paying it back at rates that were no doubt negotiated under duress during the decade Iraq was under UN sanctions when lenders in countries like France (to mention only one) did deals under very lopsided conditions.

Their amendment approved shortly after Vice President Dick Cheney (news – web sites) failed to bring wavering senators in line through a round of phone calls would require half of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid to be a loan to Iraq, unless the administration persuaded other countries to forgive 90 percent of Iraq’s existing debt.

If the $150 to $200 billion in foreign debt is forgiven which appears highly unlikely the full $20 billion in aid would be given to Iraq…

Think Different, my ass
I just loaded up iTunes so I could, at long last, check out the Apple Music Store from my Macless household.

No Husker Du, no Black Flag, no Dead Kennedy’s, no Pogues, nor many newer bands, like Death Cab for Cutey or the Libertines.

Disappointing, though not suprising.

Boston.com / News / Nation / Kennedy calls case for Iraq war `a fraud’:

‘There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically,’ Kennedy said. ‘This whole thing was a fraud’

Kennedy may well be right, but reconstruction is still going to have to be paid for. If the administration has it’s numbers right (and who really believes they do) it is going to work out to be about $300 for every man, woman and child in the US. What’s really sad about that, is that it is all going to be wasted, along with the considerable goodwill the US has built up, at considerable expense, over the last hundred years.

The “investment” in Afghanistan is already in steep decline. Distracted by Iraq, US and coalition efforts to date are being squandered as warlords re-establish themselves and the Taliban is allowed to leak over the border from Pakistan and pursue a brilliant campaign to discredit not just the US, but every other foreign power involved. They shoot up aid workers, disrupting aid efforts, and then wisper convincing lies pinning the failure to deliver aid on us. In short, Afghanistan will once again be fertile ground for backwards-ass medieval thinkers with access to 21st century killing technology. Hell, we fucking fertilized the ground for them.

In Iraq, we have a big payment coming due just as the US economy shows some signs of life and politicians, sensing an issue they can play to their political advantage are wary of writing the check. Bush appears to go looking for help at the UN from the very people he alienated so completely in the spring, and to show his sincerity, he uses the same rhetoric that worked so well for him before.

Directron.com Looks to have a good selection of mini/micro/flex-ITX cases and bare-bones systems. Cool, because i’m looking for a compact, quiet, lower-lower platform to use to replace this ATX midtower I’m using for a firewall, and perhaps one I can use to build a small file server.

F*$k Verisign. They are wildcarding most domains, so if you type in an improper host name, you get a Verisign web page, so it appears they own the domain.