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Back to Iraq. It’s hard to stay away. Apparently harder if you’re the president. With admissions now that we are stuck in Iraq for a long time to come and that it is draining us at almost $4B/month, dear Mr. Bush is stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. It’s too late to back out now, and political suicide to admit that we shouldn’t have gone. If we leave now, the level of disorder in the Mid East will clearly increase, thereby leaving it in a worse and more unstable state than it was in before the war. All this is compounded by the state of the economy and the mounting deficit which all indicate that we can’t afford to stay for one reason, and can’t afford to leave for the other. There is no obvious way to win.

That is, unless you’re Haliburton. It is estimated that up to 1/3 of the monthly burn in Iraq is going to independent contractors, and Mr. Cheeney’s old company is getting a big chunk of that. I suppose this is a backwards way to pump cash back into the economy, but I’d be surprised if much of that money got back to American employees. A few executives are getting rich, but hardly anyone else here.

I wonder how long it will be before India starts recognizing that we are outsourcing logistical military support and starts focusing on scooping up that business? Okay, so that was cynical, but I work in the technology industry and the only thing more annoying than our foreign policy is the trend for big business to move more and more jobs offshore. But that’s another rant for another time.