Well that will wake you up…
Spend a day in bed, and Bernanke cuts interest rates. Immediately the stock market freaks out in jubilation, which tends to make me think that no-one involved is getting the point. I’m wondering if anyone has considered the possibility that a recession may be exactly what the economy needs to do, and fighting it will just make the pain worse in the long run? Maybe we don’t need to be going out there and buying all the stupid crap we can get our hands on? Maybe the service economy isn’t such a hot idea? Maybe the top tier of our earners doesn’t need to be making obscene profits and going out and immediately using them to get loans to do stupid things? Maybe our financial sector (which will be shedding jobs like dandruff well into next year) needs to take a deep breath and chill out?
I know, I’m a moonbat.
Unlike in the financial sector, let’s just hope Blackwater doesn’t find any kind of relief from our government, as much as some idiots want to tie themselves into rhetorical knots justifying the supra-legal status of that particular organization. The New York Times doesn’t seem to be interested in taking sides until the dust settles and we can see what’s what:
BAGHDAD, Sept. 18 — A preliminary Iraqi report on a shooting involving an American diplomatic motorcade said Tuesday that Blackwater security guards were not ambushed, as the company reported, but instead fired at a car when it did not heed a policeman’s call to stop, killing a couple and their infant.
The report, by the Ministry of Interior, was presented to the Iraqi cabinet and, though unverified, seemed to contradict an account offered by Blackwater USA that the guards were responding to gunfire by militants. The report said Blackwater helicopters had also fired. The Ministry of Defense said 20 Iraqis had been killed, a far higher number than had been reported before.
In a sign of the seriousness of the standoff, the American Embassy here suspended diplomatic missions outside the Green Zone and throughout Iraq on Tuesday.
“There was not shooting against the convoy,” said Ali al-Dabbagh, the Iraqi government’s spokesman. “There was no fire from anyone in the square.”
A State Department spokesman, Edgar Vasquez, said he had not heard of the report and repeated that the department was conducting an investigation supported by the American military. A spokeswoman for Blackwater did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.
A little further, and you find something frighteningly creepy:
Sean McCormack, the spokesman for the State Department, said in a briefing that contractors “are subject to Department of State rules of engagement.”
“These are defensive in nature,” he said. When contractors and employees are attacked, he added, they “will respond with graduated use of force, proportionate to the kind of fire and attack that they’re coming under.”
Graduated use of force… where have we heard something like that before, how badly did it end up, and why is it a concept that is even applicable to something like a private military company??? If a group of trigger-happy civilians in a war zone is allowed to have enough firepower at their disposal for its use to be “graduated,” then they have too much firepower, are in the wrong place, and almost certainly should be thrown out of the area right along with the people who decided to let them in in the first place.
