Saddam's Wife, Daughter Indicted; Iran Bled Dry By Iraq?
Dave Price
This is interesting: via Roggio, Saddam Hussein's wife and daughter are the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant for funding Baathist insurgents in Iraq. Given the dramatic turnaround in Anbar, one has to wonder if the looted oil money is beginning to run dry.
Meanwhile, there are also reports floating around that Iran is having trouble financing their meddling in Iraq, which might help explain why a socialist oil-rich government is rationing gasoline to its own populace even as oil prices go ever higher. Do most Iranians want to pay for a war against freedom in Iraq even as they can't afford gas? I bet that isn't a popular policy.
Whether their policies are popular or not is beside the point.
Until the people fill the streets and hang the mullahs from the lightposts, it doesn't mean a thing.
It might help if the Iranian government, with possibly the most inept economic policy on the planet, didn't sell gasoline to the Iranian people at prices below market levels (as does the Iraqi government).
Don't kid yourself, Dave. The Iranian mullahcracy keep itself in power using hired thugs, many foreigners. They'll do whatever it takes to remain in power because for them there is no alternative. I doubt they have retirement plans.
Our alternatives are to deal with the government of Iran as it is or to remove it, either by connivance or forcibly. The way the wind blows these days I don't believe we're going to do the latter, breathless agenda-driven reports notwithstanding. I think we need to deal with the government of Iran as it is, unpalatable as that may be.
I don't disagree they'll resort to whatever thuggery necessary to stay in power. But Iran's police state isn't efficient or totalitarian enough to totally discount the possibility of revolution, as we might in N Korea or Cuba. If ten million Iranians march on Tehran, the regime will fall, and they know this is possible and must therefore make some effort to placate them.
Ron,
They have some, just not enough to be self-sufficient.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.