Newsweek reports that, "Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and - mother of all surprises - it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all."
Thanks to Don Surber for the link.
Meanwhile, Juan Cole has issued a call to action to the blogosphere. He writes, "Elliot Abrams must go. Elliot Abrams is a felon. He was involved in stealing Pentagon weapons from US stockpiles, selling them to the Ayatollah Khomeini, and then stealing the Iranian funds so garnered to give to far-right Central American death squads, and then lying about all this to Congress. The Congress in the Constitution controls the budget. The Congress had cut off money to the rightwing death squads supported by Reagan and henchmen like Abrams. This elaborate criminal conspiracy inside the White House was the Right's response. They shredded the Constitution (and ever since have been calling their critics 'unpatriotic.') In 1991, Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress under oath. Without the plea deal, he was facing felony charges, since what he did was in fact a felony...
"I'm serious about this, everyone. The bloggers are touted as influential, but their influence is hard to measure or prove. Let's make this a test case. Can Kos help? Eschaton? Talkingpointsmemo? And, it needn't be only one side of the aisle. A lot of principled persons on the right are deeply troubled by the criminality of this administration. Please write your congressional representative and your senators and demand that they hold hearings on why Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy in the Bush White House. Enough of being ruled by criminals and liars and warmongers. Enough of censorship and attacks on our Constitution. Elliot Abrams must go."
Blogs for Bush: "As Barnes goes on to note - and as anyone with any sense at all already knows - the ISG report was DOA at the White House...the MSM and the Democrats considered the document of President Bush's surrender, but President Bush treated it as the used toilette paper it actually is, and filed it where one normally files such documents.
"It looks as though there will be a surge in US troops in Iraq - setting at defiance both our armed enemies and our fool domestic critics. As I've said for a while, I don't think that more troops are actually needed in Iraq, but the pyschological dividends of doubling down in Iraq far outweigh the purely military considerations involved. I also don't believe that these troops are merely to be a police force for Baghdad - they are designed to crush armed opposition in Iraq, and provide a ready-to-hand force for dealing with Syria and Iran, as proves necessary.
"Victory has always been the necessity in war - there is no substitute for it, and you either obtain it, or you are defeated...there is no such thing as an 'exit strategy', 'redeployment' or 'peace process'...all of these are mere euphemisms for the stronger side allowing itself to be defeated in battle. It looks as though President Bush will carry on and keep doing what he's always done - the right thing, no matter what his critics say."
"2008 pres"
6:27:26 AM 
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