The Rag Blog

When is a national healthcare plan almost as bad as no healthcare plan at all? When it’s proposed as a desperate PR gesture by a president with the lowest public approval rating (35%) since Richard Nixon got caught knee deep in the Watergate mudslide.

President George W. Bush is knee deep in it himself, though it’s not mud that he’s stuck in. He unveiled his version of “health care reform” during his January 23 State of the Union address before the new Democratically-controlled Congress. As difficult as it is to imagine, his take on universal healthcare is even worse than his plan to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq. Bush’s idea of “healthcare reform” is nothing short of a huge giveaway to corporate America. It’s a slap in the face to working-class people who can barely make it in an economy that has left them poorer than they’ve been in a long time.

The Bush proposal in a nutshell: Employees who are fortunate enough to have heath insurance would suddenly have to pay taxes on it. All those healthcare benefits packages that have been won through long years of struggle by the labor movement would be considered taxable income. Companies, too, would be taxed on the portion of those benefits that they pay for their workers. Those without health benefits would allegedly have an incentive for buying insurance: They’d get a tax credit every year.

It’s funny how something completely unrelated can inform us on the thought process driving Bush’s decision to double down on his Iraq gamble. Twenty or so years ago I co-authored a book on the S&L crisis. It was back then, and in Texas, I learned something that explains everything about Bush’s “New Way Forward” in Iraq.

Back in the early 1980s when Ronald Reagan deregulated the savings and loan industry, Texas became the nation’s biggest cesspool of S&L crookery.

At the core of their thieving strategy was a little trick they described thusly:

“A rolling loan gathers no loss.”

These wily Texas coyotes had figured out a win/win situation. S&L operators could help their buddies “borrow” money from their S&Ls, not pay it back, and still allow the S&L to book loan fees and other profits, upon which the S&L executives based their salaries and bonuses.

Ah, you say, but wouldn’t bank regulators notice that the loans were in default? No. Because each time a loan came due the S&L would “roll it over” — renew it — adding all interest due into the new loan and booking it as income. The loans got bigger and bigger, and never got paid off. The bankers got rich, the borrowers got rich, American taxpayers got the bill. A classic Texas “win/win” business deal.

The other rule of Texas high-rollers back then was to never place your own money into risky deals. Instead use what they called “OPM,” Other People’s Money. In the case of the S&L debacle, the money stolen and squandered was taxpayer insured savings. .

That’s precisely the kind of deal Bush has had going in Iraq, and wants to extend. He’s not putting his own children’s lives at risk, but OPK – Other People’s Kids. And his rolling deployments gathers no loss. As long as he can keep feeding fresh troops into Iraq his project cannot be proven a failure. If Bush can just keep borrowing other people’s kids to place at risk, and rolling over – renewing — his Iraq policy for just two more years, he’s home free. It’s another Texas “win/win” in which the perp gets away and the American people pay the price.

There are other analogies with the Texas S&L debacle – because this really is almost uniquely a Texas mindset. For example, every single Texas S&L crook I interviewed after the feds closed their bankrupt thrift and/or foreclosed on their projects, made the same claim – almost word for word. It went like this:

“My S&L (or project) would not have failed if the feds had just let me complete my plan. If they had just funded it to completion it would not have failed. They caused the loss by stopping us from seeing the project through.”

And that’s precisely what Bush will claim if can just roll over his Iraq loans for two more years. He will leave office and go back to Crawford. The new administration will be forced to declare his Iraq project in default, bite the bullet and withdraw US troops. The lid will come off the already simmering Sunni/Shia civil war and that’s when we’ll hear from George again. He’s sidle out from this ranch house, cozy up to Fox News microphone and declare:

Plus, when you look at where US troops are being killed, it is in Sunni Arab al-Anbar Province, and Sunni Arab Salahuddin, Diyal, Mosul, and West Baghdad. Those Sunni guerrillas are not being helped by Iran. They are being helped by Sunnis in countries allied to the US.

And then, the US hold over 10,000 prisoners swept up on suspicion of insurgent activity in Iraq. What number of them is Iranians? Slim to none. More Syrians and Jordanians and Saudis by far than Iranians.

So if 99 percent of the problem is with the Sunni Arabs of Iraq, why all this big talk about Shiite Iran?

WASHINGTON // President Bush staunchly defended a tough new administration policy on Iran that is drawing criticism at home and anxiety abroad, insisting yesterday that it is only sensible for U.S. troops to move aggressively against Iranians who endanger them in Iraq.

Bush, appearing with military advisers at the White House, said the policy is not meant to spread U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran, but asserted that U.S. troops have the right to seek out agents from Tehran, which he has accused of supporting Iraqi militants.

“It just makes sense that if somebody is trying to harm our troops or stop us from achieving our goal, or killing innocent civilians in Iraq, that we will stop them,” Bush said.

The nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are selling U.S. Treasuries at the quickest pace in more than three years, according to U.S. Treasury Department data. Concerned analysts predict a dollar sell-off coupled with rising interest rates.

In the three months ending in November 2006, oil-exporting nations including Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela sold 9.4 percent of their U.S. government debt—a significant amount, considering these countries own more than $100 billion worth.

Over the past few years, oil producers have become very important dollar supporters, rivaling the United Kingdom, and even China and Japan.

Since most oil is sold in dollars, rising oil prices meant that opec countries’ dollar reserves ballooned. In fact, during 2006 alone, oil producers amassed a whopping $500 million in dollar-denominated savings. Fortunately for Americans, the dollar’s historic role as a stable store of wealth influenced many of the world’s oil exporters to either save those dollars or recycle them into U.S. Treasuries.

However, some economists worry that mounting dollar sales and slowing Treasury purchases indicate the dollar is losing its reputation as a stable reserve currency.

WASHINGTON – Vice President Dick Cheney exerted “constant” pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration’s use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel’s Democratic chairman charged Thursday.

In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans’ international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants.

In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was “not hearsay” that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe of the administration’s use of prewar intelligence.

“It was just constant,” Rockefeller said of Cheney’s alleged interference. He added that he knew that the vice president attended regular policy meetings in which he conveyed White House directions to Republican staffers.

Republicans “just had to go along with the administration,” he said.

In an e-mail response to Rockefeller’s comments, Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea McBride, said: “The vice president believes Senator Roberts was a good chairman of the Intelligence Committee.”

Roberts’ chief of staff, Jackie Cottrell, blamed the Democrats for the investigation remaining incomplete more than two years after it began.

“Senator Rockefeller’s allegations are patently untrue,” she said in an e-mail statement. “The delays came from the Democrats’ insistence that they expand the scope of the inquiry to make it a more political document going into the 2006 elections. Chairman Roberts did everything he could to accommodate their requests for further information without allowing them to distort the facts.”

“I’m not aware of any effort by the vice president, his staff or anyone in the administration to influence the speed at which the committee did its work,” said Bill Duhnke, who was Roberts’ staff director.

The president relies on thousands of private soldiers with little oversight, a disturbing example of the military-industrial complex.
JEREMY SCAHILL is a fellow at the Nation Institute and the author of the forthcoming “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.”

AS PRESIDENT BUSH took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they U.S. soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina — Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallouja — two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple U.S. sieges of Fallouja and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatized the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.”

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war’s privatization a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorize an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the U.S. disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

BAGHDAD, 24 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – The Iraq Red Crescent is steadily resuming its work in Baghdad after it suspended its activities in the capital for more than three weeks following the kidnapping by militants of its staff members and volunteers on 17 December 2006.

Of the 30 staff members kidnapped from the heavily guarded Red Crescent headquarters, 10 are yet to be released.

The aid agency has been the main conduit for the distribution of supplies, food and non-food items, countrywide, according to the Ministry of Displacement and Migration and local aid agencies. Thousands of families became desperate after the suspension of the Red Crescent’s work in Baghdad and the closure of 40 of its subsidiary offices in the capital.

BAGHDAD, 25 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – “I’m a 57-year-old former Ba’athist official [under former President Saddam Hussein’s rule] at the Ministry of Finance where I was earning a very good salary. I originally came from al-Qaim city in Anbar province. I graduated in economics.

“I had a wife and two lovely children – a son and a daughter. Our home was an extravagant villa and we used to eat the best food you could find in Baghdad.

“I used to buy new jewellery for my wife and daughter practically every month and I used to get my wife and all my children the best clothes and shoes.

“Whenever my son got good marks in college I would reward him with a holiday to neighbouring countries. And when he graduated from Medical College in 1999, I gave him plenty of money and arranged for him to tour Europe.

“That was my life before the US-led invasion, a life of luxury. But when the regime fell, I lost everything I had.

“My wife, Nawal, who was 46, my daughter Sundus, who was 24, and my mother were all killed in an air-strike on my father’s house in Mansour, one of Baghdad’s most respectable districts.

At least 73 frightened Palestinians have arrived in El Waleed, at the Iraq-Syrian border, after fleeing Baghdad earlier this week following the detention and release of 30 Palestinian men on Tuesday.

Their arrival brings to 593 the number of Palestinians stuck at the Iraq-Syria border, many of them for months. Syria has denied them access and they refuse to return to Baghdad, where Palestinians have been the target of numerous attacks.

UNHCR has not yet had a chance to talk to the newly arrived refugees, who arrived at the border on Wednesday night. Along with ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and other partners, we are ensuring that enough food, water and relief items are on site. Additional tents are also being delivered.

BAGHDAD, 25 Jan 2007 (IRIN) – There is increased international concern about the plight of Palestinians living in Baghdad following the arrest on 16 January of 30 Palestinians by Iraqi security forces in two neighbourhoods of the capital, Baghdad. Although they were released shortly after, the UN is concerned that Palestinians have been systematically targetted and threatened by authorities and militias.

However, despite their release, a group of up to 90 terrified Palestinian men, women and children fled Baghdad on Wednesday heading toward the Syrian border, where the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says more than 500 Palestinians have been stranded for months.

“We are in an exceptional situation as we are in the midst of a major security operation to secure Baghdad. Everyone is subjected to any interrogation from the security directorates,” said a police officer on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to disclose security information.

In one incident in Baghdad’s central district of al-Batawyen, interior ministry forces broke doors and windows of a building that is rented by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to house Palestinian refugees and arrested 17 men.

The second incident took place in al-Amin district in the eastern side of the capital. According to UNHCR, 13 Palestinian men were apprehended by men wearing Iraqi security uniforms.

“There was sniper fire against a government building from the rooftop of the al-Batawyen house in which they [the Palestinians] were staying. But police later released them when they found them innocent,” the police officer said. “And the second incident was just to check their legal documents.”