ConservativeINC

Yes, my friends, he still had the intention to reconstitute his WMD programs (I thought he never, ever, ever, had nukes or anything harmful to anyone, guess the media got this one wrong). This proves that the administration did not lie about Iraq. Saddam had every intention of building nukes; just at the right time.

Don’t expect an apology from any of your liberal friends though. They’ll focus on the fact that he didn’t have nukes at the time (he, evidently, lied about having nukes to ward off an invasion from Iran). But that isn’t what is important. What is important is the fact that he had a history of using WMDs (gassing the Kurds, anyone?) and had the engineers and the technology in place to restart the program at any time. Did the libs really want us to leave a madman in power of a potential nuclear state or did they just want to try and tear down a decent man so they could advance their agenda? You know where I stand.

One last important thing from Saddam’s confessions: he still takes credit for the insurgency. Yup, even though the agent who debriefed Saddam and CBS doubt this and chalk it up to Arab machismo Saddam, to his last breath, took credit for the “secret war.” Now maybe it was machismo but maybe not.

And if he had a hand in the insurgency wouldn’t that mean that he had connections to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda? A lot of the insurgents that have been subsequently smashed by our surge came from foreign lands and somehow they knew where they would find friends in Iraq. It would make more sense if Saddam or someone in the Iraqi government (which would mean that person or persons were under the order of Saddam to help the insurgents) orchestrated the insurgency, at least at first.

Saddam’s confessions provide an insight into the mind of a diabolical dictator. I will be watching 60 Minutes on Sunday to find out more. Until then remember that he was planning on building WMDs and he still took credit for a foreign insurgency. Thank God we took him out before he could cause some serious damage.

(CBS) Saddam Hussein initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.

Piro, in his first television interview, relays this and other revelations to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley this Sunday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Piro spent almost seven months debriefing Saddam in a plan based on winning his confidence by convincing him that Piro was an important envoy who answered to President Bush. This and being Saddam’s sole provider of items like writing materials and toiletries made the toppled Iraqi president open up to Piro, a Lebanese-American and one of the few FBI agents who spoke Arabic. “He told me he initially miscalculated… President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998…a four-day aerial attack,” says Piro. “He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack.” “He didn’t believe the U.S. would invade?” asks Pelley, “No, not initially,” answers Piro.

Once the invasion was certain, says Piro, Saddam asked his generals if they could hold the invaders for two weeks. “And at that point, it would go into what he called the secret war,” Piro tells Pelley. But Piro isn’t convinced that the insurgency was Saddam’s plan. “Well, he would like to take credit for the insurgency,” says Piro.

Saddam still wouldn’t admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, “For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” he tells Pelley. He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. “Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there,” says Piro. “He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program.” This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

Saddam bragged that he changed his routine and security to elude capture. “What he wanted to really illustrate is…how he was able to outsmart us,” says Piro. “He told me he changed…the way he traveled. He got rid of his normal vehicles. He got rid of the protective detail that he traveled with, really just to change his signature.”

It took nine months to finally capture Saddam, but U.S. calculations on where he might be early on turned out to be accurate. Saddam was at Dora Farms early in the war when the known presidential site was targeted with tons of bombs and many missiles. “He said it in a kind of a bragging fashion that he was there, but that we missed him. He wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was there,” Piro tells Pelley.

Source: cbsnews.com

BigT

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The market is based as much on perceptions as it is on fundamentals. Good feelings fueled the twin rises in equities (stocks) and real estate. Many were riding such a high that they could not see or even think about a bottom. The roller coaster was going up and everyone was giggling and enjoying the view.

But the roller coaster hit its summit, it is a really tall summit indeed, and as the people in the front car started screaming panic spread to the very last car. Now the perception is that we will never reach the bottom. Yeah, sure, a majority of the super smart (and they are super smart, don’t deceive yourself) on Wall Street don’t think the cars are going to jump off their tracks - but the panic is already spreading.

And that panic has just received some false authentication from our trusted financial oracles in the Fed. Seeing that panic was setting in throughout the world the Fed decided to signal that there really is something to worry about and lowered the fed funds rate .75% to 3.5% (this is the rate that banks charge each other on overnight loans). Instead of ushering in a rally and calming wary investor’s nerves all the Fed has done is freak out investors to the point where they might go nuts and rock the roller coaster cars off their tracks.

Compounding the mounting fear is the fact that they made this move a week before they were scheduled to meet. The market obviously sees this as confirmation that our market (and probably the global market) will derail. Why else would the Fed cut rates a week before they were suppose to meet if not because they thought we were on the cusp of a recession - or a depression?

This is the time in this piece when we go to a guy with a funny hat in Davos, Switzerland. The guy, from the Financial Times, is their lead economist. Here’s a link to what he has to say. It’s only three and a half minutes (plus a fifteen second commercial up front) and, if you are really impatient, the basic drift is just what I said. Well, all that I said and some further insight only a guy in the magical financial holy land of Davos can know about. Oh, and you’ll get to see the funny hat.

As I finish writing this on Wednesday at about 1:10 PM EST the Dow is down around 250 points. 250! AHHH, all is going to Hell! Sell everything! Go to the bank and get all your money out! Cash out the retirement fund! Put all your money under your mattress! We’re going to CRASH!

Obviously I’m kidding. The ride is going to get a bit bumpier before it gets better. It might last the year, maybe two, but the market’s ride will pick up again when cooler heads prevail. The Fed, chaired by a man whom I had such high hopes for, will eventually get it right and stop freaking investors out. But let’s be candid for a second. The Fed, although it matters a great deal, isn’t the be all and end all of our economy. If ours or any other economy, for that matter, could be magically improved by a policy switch made by the Fed then planned economies would still be all the rage.

The major determining factor for an economy’s success is the people who make up that market. Eventually the people will realize the situation they are in is not as dire as they fear and will go on living their lives and continue to work and make money at an ever higher clip. Every time a market panic has happened we were able to eventually weather the storm. This time will be no different. BigT

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Who, besides astute economic followers (If you can’t see me, I’m raising my hand), knew Ireland had the third freest economy? Just a couple of years ago it was, well, not so “free.”

HONG KONG - Asia is home to the world’s freest _ and most repressed _ economies, but Europe ranked highest as a region in terms of economic freedom, an annual report released Tuesday by the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal said.

While the world as a whole made little progress toward greater economic freedom, there were some surprising improvements by countries such as Mauritius and Mongolia, the survey found.

Hong Kong and Singapore retained their No. 1 and No. 2 rankings respectively on the annual Index of Economic Freedom for the 14th successive year. Both port cities benefit from low taxes and liberalized trade. Hong Kong, however, saw its score dip slightly due to higher inflation and greater tax revenues.

European countries accounted for half of the top 20 economies considered free or mostly free, with Ireland at No. 3, Switzerland at No. 9 and Britain at No. 10. The U.S. ranked No. 5, and Canada ranked 6th.

Moves by newer members of the European Union to introduce straightforward tax policies to attract more investment were having a radical impact on the region as a whole, the authors said.

“What we are seeing is a very strong commitment to economic freedom in the new EU countries, and this is having a positive impact on policies in the some of the older European countries … such as France,” said Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. “I think we will continue to see this evolve over time and we expect to see gradual improvement in economic freedom throughout Europe as a whole.”

While Europe was moving more greater economic liberalization, the prevailing sentiment in the United States was protectionism, said Mary Kissel, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Asian edition.

“We have Democratic candidates coming out against free trade agreement and for higher taxes,” she told reporters. “On the Republican side too, there’s talk of protecting American jobs. Meanwhile, you have a Congress which is considering a clutch of bills aimed at punishing China for exporting too much to American consumers.”

The index, which grades 157 economies on 10 economic factors, including property rights, regulation of wages and prices and trade barriers, shows “a very high correlation” between a liberalized economy and a country’s prosperity, Feulner said.

“The average per-capita of free countries is more than seven times that of the repressed and un-free economies,” he said.

The most liberalized economies on the index average about $33,579 per capita gross domestic product while repressed countries average about $3,813.

North Korea again ranked lowest on the list, below Zimbabwe and Cuba.

“Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the world’s people lives in repressed economies. They seek opportunity, but find only obstacles, corruption, bureaucratic red tape or even outright theft of their resources,” he said.

Two of the world’s largest economies, China and India, ranked quite low on the scale, coming in at 126 and 115 respectively.

“China’s economy remains mostly un-free. It still restricts many areas of its economy, financial freedom , investment freedom; property protection is very weak. The banking sector remains tightly controlled and the judicial system is politicized,” he said.

Several other Asian nations also were near the bottom of the index, including Vietnam (135th place), Laos (137), Bangladesh (149) and Myanmar (153).

For the first time, a country from Sub-Saharan Africa made it into the top 20. Mauritius climbed to 18th place due to its recent economic reforms.

“We should keep our eyes on this country to see if other countries in the region follow suit,” Feulner said.

Other countries that moved up the scale were Egypt and Bahrain. Mongolia jumped 16 places into the mostly free category with a rank of 62 due to its moderately low tax rates, low trade tarrifs and ease of opening businesses.

Source: sg.news.yahoo.com

BigT

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