The Iranian Situation

New York Times

The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

The Bush administration made no public announcement of the politically delicate seizure of the Iranians, though in response to specific questions the White House confirmed Sunday that the Iranians were in custody.

Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials, remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, “We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees.”

It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that “a lot of material” was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.

We’re going start seeing this sort of thing more and more as elements of the administration makes the case to move into Iran.

U.S.: Sanctions Alone ‘Not Enough’ for Iran

Earlier in the day, Undersecretary [of State] Nicholas Burns said the Bush administration will try to persuade Russia, China, Japan and the European Union to take more vigorous action, including cutting off lending to Iran.

“We don’t think this resolution is enough in itself. And we’re certainly not going to put all our eggs in a U.N. basket,” said Burns in a teleconference with reporters.

How to Lose an Army

The Democrats’ approach to national-security issues through the fall campaign was to hide under the bed and ignore them as much as possible. That worked politically, so they are likely to stick with it.

The Bush administration, for its part, will be tempted to do what small men have done throughout history when in trouble: try to escalate their way out of it. The White House has already half-convinced itself that the majority of its troubles in Iraq stem from Iran and Syria, a line the neocons push assiduously.
[...]
The elephant in the parlor is, of course, the fact that Israel wants an attack on Iran, and for Republicans and Democrats alike, Israel is She Who Must Be Obeyed. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ran to Washington as soon as the election was over, and the subject of his discussions with President Bush is easy to imagine. Who will do the dirty deed and when? Iran has already announced that it will consider an attack by Israel an attack by the U.S. as well and respond accordingly, so the difference may not much matter.

That response should concern us, to put it mildly, for that is where a war with Iran and the war in Iraq intersect. The Iranians have said that this time they have 140,000 American hostages, in the form of U.S. troops in Iraq. If either Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran, we could lose an army.

How could such a thing happen? The danger springs from the fact that almost all the supplies our forces in Iraq use, including vital fuel for their vehicles, comes over one supply line, which runs toward the south and the port in Kuwait. If that line were cut, our forces might not have enough fuel to get out of Iraq. American armies are enormously fuel-thirsty.

One might think that fuel would be abundant in Iraq, which is (or was) a major oil exporter. In fact, because of the ongoing chaos, Iraq is short of refined oil products. Our forces, if cut off from their own logistics, could not simply fuel up at local gas stations as German Gen. Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Corps did on its way to the English Channel in the 1940 campaign against France.

There are two ways, not mutually exclusive, that Iran could attempt to cut our supply line in Iraq in response to an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The first would be by encouraging Shi’ite militias to which it is allied, including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, to rise up against us throughout southern Iraq, which is Shi’ite country. The militias would be supported by widespread infiltration of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who have shown themselves to be good at this kind of thing. They are the people who trained and equipped Hezbollah for its successful defense of southern Lebanon against the vaunted Israeli army this past summer.

The Shi’ite militias already lie across our single supply line, and we should expect them to cut it in response to Iranian requests. We are already at war with the Mahdi Army, against which our forces in Iraq have been launching a series of recent raids and air strikes. A British journalist I know, one with long experience in Iraq, told me he asked the head of SCIRI, which controls the Badr Brigades, how he would respond if the U.S. attacked Iran. “Then,” he replied, “we would do our duty.”

Iran has a second, bolder option it could combine with a Shi’ite insurrection at our rear. It could cross the Iran-Iraq border with several armored and mechanized divisions of the regular Iranian Army, sever our supply lines, then move to roll us up from the south with the aim of encircling us, perhaps in and around Baghdad. This would be a classic operational maneuver, the sort of thing for which armored forces are designed.

At present, U.S. forces in Iraq could be vulnerable to such an action by the Iranian army. We have no field army in Iraq; necessarily, our forces are penny-packeted all over the place, dealing with insurgents. They would be hard-pressed to assemble quickly to meet a regular force, especially if fuel was running short.

The U.S. military’s answer, as is too often the case, will be air power. It is true that American air power could destroy any Iranian armored formations it caught in the open. But there is a tried-and-true defense against air power, one the Iranians could employ: bad weather. Like the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, they could wait to launch their offensive until the weather promised a few days of protection. After that, they would be so close to our own forces that air power could not attack them without danger of hitting friendlies. (This is sometimes know as “hugging tactics.”) Reportedly, the Turkish General Staff thinks the Iranians can and will employ this second option, no doubt in combination with the first.

Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the fact that, just as the French high command refused to consider the possibility of a German attack through the Ardennes in 1940, Washington will not consider the possibility that an attack on Iran could cost us our army in Iraq. We have made one of the most common military mistakes—believing our own propaganda. Over and over, the U.S. military tells the world and itself, “No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We are the greatest military the world has ever seen!”

Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it’s bunk. The U.S. Armed Forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second-Generation militaries. They are today being fought and beaten by Fourth-Generation opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third-Generation opponents who can react faster than America’s process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by superior strategy, by trick, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships: they are unsinkable until something sinks them.

If the U.S. were to lose the army it has in Iraq to Iraqi militias, Iranian regular forces, or a combination of both, cutting our one line of supply and then encircling us, the world would change. It would be our Adrianople, our Rocroi, our Stalingrad. American power and prestige would never recover. Nothing, not even Israel’s demands, should lead us to run this risk, which is inherent in any attack on Iran.

There is one action, a possibility opened by the Democrats’ electoral victory, that would stop the Bush administration from launching such an attack or allowing Israel to do so. If our senior military leaders, especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would go public with their opposition to such an adventure, the new Democratic majority in Congress would have to react. The public that put it in office on an antiwar platform would compel it to answer or lose all credibility. While the Joint Chiefs would infuriate the White House, they would receive the necessary political cover from the new Democratic Congress. The potential is there, for the generals and the Democrats alike.

For it to be realized, and the disaster of war with Iran to be averted, all the generals must do is show some courage. If the Joint Chiefs keep silent now and allow the folly of an attack on Iran to go forward, they will share in full the moral responsibility for the results, which may include the loss of an army. Perhaps we should call it “Operation Cornwallis.”

SaveTheGOP on Tom DeLay

100% spot-on.

Alexander Brunk

SavetheGOP readers have read my criticisms in the past of certain conservative leaders continuing to embrace Tom DeLay following his fall from power in Washington. I’ve been sorely dissapointed that Redstate, one of the country’s top conservative political blogs is now allowing Tom DeLay to post on it. DeLay is a corrupt, establishment republican who doesn’t have a small government bone in his body. This is the man who announced last year that there was “no fat left to cut in the federal budget.”

Now, its getting worse. Word is that the American Conservative Union is working on a deal to hire Delay as their top Washington strategist and lobbyist:

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is about to return to the Washington political scene as a high-profile operative for the American Conservative Union (ACU) if his negotiations with ACU Chairman David Keene are successfully completed.

DeLay, who has moved his residence from Texas to Washington’s Virginia suburbs, would serve as a high-profile strategist and lobbyist for the ACU to promote conservative causes.

Although DeLay is highly regarded among conservatives in the face of his prosecution by a Democratic district attorney in Austin, such support is not universal. At least two ACU board members have threatened to resign if the deal with DeLay is consummated.

Highly regarded? Maybe by all the sheeple who were still saying Bush was a great conservative in October 2006. But the rest of us know DeLay as the man who pushed through the worst piece of federal legislation in twenty years, the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. The tactics that were used by DeLay, Roy Blunt, and the rest of the GOP leadership team to get that bill passed were both immoral and illegal.

I’m deeply dissapointed that the ACU is even considering hiring Tom DeLlay. He is a stain on the Republican party and every time he’s mentioned as a “leading conservative Republican” it sets our movement back among the general populace.

So my message to David Keene: don’t do it. Let DeLay find employment elsewhere. His record on our issues is not a good one.

Pelosi Targets Grassroots Freedom of Speech

Human Events

House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) has pledged to take up a lobbying reform proposal that would impose new regulations on speech by grassroots organizations, while providing a loophole in the rules for large corporations and labor unions.

The legislation would make changes to the legal definition of “grassroots lobbying” and require any organization that encourages 500 or more members of the general public to contact their elected representatives to file a report with detailed information about their organization to the government on a quarterly basis.

The report would include identifying the organization’s expenditures, the issues focused on and the members of Congress and other federal officials who are the subject of the advocacy efforts. A separate report would be required for each policy issue the group is active on.

“Right now, grassroots groups don’t have to report at all if they are communicating with the public,” said Dick Dingman of the Free Speech Coalition, Inc. “This is an effort that would become a major attack on the 1st Amendment.”

Under the bill, communications aimed at an organization’s members, employees, officers or shareholders would be exempt from the reporting requirement. That would effectively exempt most corporations, trade associations and unions from the reporting requirements—but not most conservative grassroots groups, which frequently are less formally organized.

Larger, well-funded organizations are also currently eligible for a “low-dollar lobbyist exemption” that Pelosi’s bill does not give to grassroots organizations. If an organization retains a lobbyist to contact lawmakers directly at a cost of $2,500 per quarter or less, or employs a full-time lobbyist at a cost of $10,000 per quarter or less, the organization does not have to report to the government.

Public Citizen, a liberal “government watchdog,” is taking credit for helping Pelosi craft the legislation and expects the final draft of the bill to closely resemble Pelosi’s Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2006, which contains these provisions.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, said the changes would help “streamline” how grassroots organizations are regulated by the IRS and other laws. Public Citizen would like Congress to adopt the IRS’s definition of “lobbying,” which includes communication that encourages the general public to contact a member of Congress on pending legislation or public policy.

“The IRS has a definition that requires all organizations, including non-profits, to file as a part of our tax returns,” Holman said. “When it comes to the election code and the lobbying disclosure act, they have no definition of grassroots lobbying. It’s excluded from everything. The IRS has a definition of grassroots lobbying, but their information is not publicly reported. It’s just our tax returns to the IRS.”

Suzanne Coffman, director of communication for Guidestar.org, which makes IRS 990 forms available on the Internet, said any secular, non-profit organization that has more than $25,000 in income per year is required by law to make the last three years worth of tax forms available upon request. “We get them directly from the IRS, and we have more than two million 990s online” said Coffman. “For non-charitable organizations, like private charities or private foundations, we have fewer because the IRS began scanning those only in April 2005. They focused on charitable organizations, which make up the bulk of exempt organizations, because those are the ones that accept tax-deductible contributions. The need for accountability is much higher with them than with other types of organizations which are sort of subsidized by the taxpayer because they federally are tax exempt, but not like a charity is.”

Public Citizen’s public IRS 990 disclosure forms show that it raised more than $3 million in 2005. That year, the group spent $297, 431 on mail and $178,182 on consulting and professional fees.

A coalition of grassroots organizers, including David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America and Terrence Scanlon of the Capitol Research Center, have written an open letter calling on Public Citizen to renounce its efforts, which they called “flawed to the point of hypocrisy.”

“This bill would apply to those who have no Washington-based lobbyists, who provide no money or gifts to members of Congress, and who merely seek to speak, associate and petition the government,” it said. “Regulating the speech, publishing, association and petitioning rights of citizens is not targeted at corruption in Washington, as Public Citizen and its supporters would believe. Instead, it is targeted directly at the 1st-Amendment rights of citizens and their voluntary associations.”

The Lobbying Transparency and Accountability Act, which made some of these changes, was actually approved by both the House and the Senate in the 109th Congress, but failed to make it through a conference committee.

To help dramatize the bill this time around, Pelosi is planning to assign sponsorship of various amendments to incoming freshman, which they will promote in their maiden House floor speeches.

Current law prevents former members of Congress and senior staff as well as senior executive staff from lobbying for one year. Pelosi’s proposal would extend that to two years and completely ban members and staff from accepting gifts, meals and privately sponsored travel.

So much for the constitution.

No Need To ‘Invest’ Surplus

Fargo Forum - December 24th, 2006

The big question of this legislative session will be how to deal with the surplus which is well more than$500 million currently. Gov. John Hoeven’s answer of increasing general fund spending by 24 percent is wholly unacceptable. The governor has clearly stated with his budget proposal that his fiscal philosophy is to “spend it while we got it.”

I urge everyone to take a look at the governor’s budget proposal and ask yourself the following five questions as you look at the numbers.

- Why is the governor recommending a total of $382 million more than the agencies themselves are requesting?

- Why are Bismarck State College, Williston State College, Minot State University – Bottineau, the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University requesting less than they received in 2005-2007 while tuition rates continue to increase?

- Why is the governor recommending that his own office receive $300,000 more than it requested?

- Why does the governor think the Executive Branch overall needs25 percent more than it asked for?

- Is there really a need to increase General Fund spending by 24 percent?

The Republicans in the Legislature must show the restraint that Hoeven seemingly does not think is necessary. Our elected officials must not be allowed to hide behind the massive amounts of tax dollars that are left over as a copout to why they should be allowed to increase spending as much as they want in an attempt to score political points.

Just because the surplus is there does not mean it should be spent; just because it is not spent does not mean it should just sit there. Those tax dollars are an overpayment by the taxpayers of this state. They must be used responsibly, and if there are excess tax dollars left over, those dollars must be returned to the people.

Gov. Hoeven may try to portray his plan for the surplus as responsible “investments” in our state’s future, but lawmakers should not be fooled by his misleading rhetoric, which erodes the objective truth behind his proposals. The governor’s convoluted tax rebate scheme and plot to increase spending merely guarantees a future in which North Dakota government grows bigger on the backs of the taxpayers.

The Legislature should not be in the business of giving government agencies more money than they presently have a need for based on their own requests. Their requests should be investigated with due diligence, but no agency or sector of the government should be given money and then allowed to “figure out how to spend it.” That is a very irresponsible and dangerous road to start down, and a very quick way to burn through money that is not the government’s money, but rather the people’s money.

Response to Dorgan’s Wa-Post Op-Ed

How Free Trade Hurts

Fewer and fewer Americans support our government’s trade policy. They see a shrinking middle class, lost jobs and exploding trade deficits.

Yet supporters of free trade continue to push for more of the same — more job-killing trade agreements, greater tax breaks for large corporations that export jobs and larger government incentives for outsourcing.

Forgive the Senator, he still doesn’t understand that corporations do not pay taxes, consumers and employees - the very people he claims to support - actually pay the taxes that are merely a pass through cost.

—

Free Trade and Illegal Immigration both have the same result - people willing to do the work cheaper than Americans doing work American would do if the laws of this nation were respected.

If Dorgan’s criticism was based in a sense of nationalism rather than being a schill for the unions maybe he’d have a point. But his solution to force everyone into unionist slavery can only make things worse.

Yeah, free trade isn’t that attractive to the average American that does not have the assets to leverage the international labor market beyond shopping at Walmart, but it’s is far superior to Dorgan’s vision of a unionist drones whose pay is determined not on the value of their labor, but on the negociating skills of their lawyers.

That only will lead to a world where no one can afford the things they are building.

There are two valid arguments against “free trade:”

1. America loses control of it’s own economic stability and destiny by becoming reliant on other nations for our material needs.

2. The use of slave labor in non-free nations to advance the living standards of Americans is indeed immoral in the Christian sense.

But the argument that unions need more power total hogwash to promote communistic goals of Marxism.

Mitt Romney Refused To Support Contract With America

Washington Post

Twelve years ago, Romney boasted that he would be more effective in fighting discrimination against gay men and lesbians than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), distanced himself from some conservative policies of the Reagan administration, and proudly recalled his family’s record in support of abortion rights.
[...]
The apparent gulf between the candidate who ran for the Senate in 1994 and the one getting ready to run for president has raised questions as to who is the real Mitt Romney. Is he the self-described moderate who unsuccessfully challenged Kennedy in the year of the Republican landslide, the self-described conservative now ready to bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, or merely an ambitious and adaptable politician? The answer could be crucial to Romney’s presidential ambitions.
[...]
In his 1994 debate with Kennedy, Romney also refused to endorse the “Contract With America,” which House Republicans had proudly presented as their campaign manifesto, and he balked when Kennedy tried to link him to the Reagan administration. “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush,” Romney retorted.

al Zawahri slaps Democrats

ABC News

Al Qaeda has sent a message to leaders of the Democratic party that credit for the defeat of congressional Republicans belongs to the terrorists.

In a portion of the tape from al Qaeda No. 2 man, Ayman al Zawahri, made available only today, Zawahri says he has two messages for American Democrats.

“The first is that you aren’t the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen — the Muslim Ummah’s vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq — are the ones who won, and the American forces and their Crusader allies are the ones who lost,” Zawahri said, according to a full transcript obtained by ABC News.

Zawahri calls on the Democrats to negotiate with him and Osama bin Laden, not others in the Islamic world who Zawahri says cannot help.

“And if you don’t refrain from the foolish American policy of backing Israel, occupying the lands of Islam and stealing the treasures of the Muslims, then await the same fate,” he said.

N.D. Republican Legislator Proposes Free Tuition

North Dakota Legislative Watch

Spend your childhood in North Dakota, study hard, and North Dakota promises to pay your college tuition.

That’s the pitch from state Sen. Tony Grindberg, R-Fargo, who will ask the Legislature to enact his plan called the North Dakota Promise. For a first-year cost of $10 million to $12 million, he said, the program will cause measurable population growth by keeping young families in the state, attracting more and creating a highly educated workforce.

Because tuition recipients have to have four years of science and four years of math in high school and no less than a 2.5 grade average, it will boost North Dakota’s “knowledge base” and give our economy the kind of workers in demand in a high-tech information age.

The more years someone spends in North Dakota’s schools during grade school and high school years, the more tuition would be paid, up to 100 percent.

“I think this will resonate with families,” Grindberg said Wednesday in releasing his plan. He wanted to roll it out for public discussion around the holidays in hopes that it will create discussion among family gatherings. He has been working on it for three months.

The first year will be funded out of the state’s surplus, estimated at more than $530 million by next July 1. The “investment,” as Grindberg calls it, would increase after the first year, he acknowledges, but can eventually be paid for from the Bank of North Dakota’s Student Loan Trust Fund and future higher tax collections resulting from economic growth.

Grindberg’s model is the Kalamazoo (Mich.) Promise that’s credited with growing enrollment in Kalamazoo schools by 1,000, or 9 percent, in just one year. It was launched in November 2005. The Wall Street Journal’s realestatejournal.com reported it has sparked a home-building boom in the “downtrodden industrial city.”

“I’ve been watching this in Michigan for quite a while,” Grindberg said.

Anything to make the debtload of North Dakota college students lower is good.

Baker case documents saved from shred order

World Net Daily

JERUSALEM – An Israeli businessman who says he served as a broker in a multimillion-dollar Iraqi collection deal by the law firm of former Secretary of State James Baker now charges in a WND interview Baker’s firm tried to cover up the alleged transactions, concerned about exposure after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The deal was structured to bypass U.S. sanctions on Iraq, according to the middleman, Nir Gouaz, president of Caesar Global Securities in Israel.

Gouaz claimed Houston-based Baker Botts made about $30 million collecting funds owed to a South Korean company by the Iraqi government at the peak of American sanctions imposed against Baghdad.

He claimed Baker was directly involved in the deal.

Gouaz told WND today Jeffrey Stonerock, a senior partner at Baker’s firm, contacted him in November 2001 inquiring whether he had any documents related to the purported Iraqi deal.

Gouaz said he told Stonerock he still had a few papers.

He said Stonerock asked him to destroy all remaining documents related to the matter and sign a nondisclosure form pledging not to discuss the alleged deal.

“He told me to just sign the nondisclosure and forget about what happened,” Gouaz told WND.

Gouaz said he refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement. He said he decided to retain all documents in his possession he said were related to the deal. The documents were obtained by WND yesterday.

“When they asked me to destroy the papers I became a bit skeptical,” said Gouaz. “They were clearly worried about exposure after the 9-11 terror attacks.”

Baker Botts today refused to comment on Gouaz’s latest allegations.

As WND Gouaz said he was tapped in 1998 by Baker Botts senior partner Stonerock to serve as a middleman in the collection of $1.65 billion in debt owned to Korea’s Hyundai Engineering by the Iraqi government.

The Baker Iraq Study Group can not be trusted because they are just trying to get their money and their client’s money from the government of Iraq. The result for America is not of their concern, these people are really the War for Oil types.

The Dying Dollar

Human Events

As a component of George W. Bush’s world of “globalism,” the status and health of the U.S. dollar deserves close scrutiny here at the end of 2007, closer than my mention of it in a recent column.

As I’ve written, China is now the holder of an incredible stash of dollars. Some reports have their cache valued at over $1 trillion. You don’t have to be an economics professor to worry about numbers like that. That’s quite a fistful of dollars for a burgeoning superpower nation whose ultimate geopolitical goals have always been suspect. China, conceivably, could put the U.S. economy in peril if it chose to dump these dollars on the open currency market.

So it’s ironic that China and the United States suddenly find themselves sitting with each other in a small life raft.

This week, Iran and Venezuela — both avowed foes of America — announced that they’ll no longer take dollars as payment for their considerable oil sales. They want euros instead.

This is no small event. The idea that the U.S. dollar is no longer a currency of preference puts increased pressure on China to avoid seeing the dollar devalued — they hold too many of them.

This increases America’s vulnerability to China’s whims. Should they ever decide to dump dollars on the international market, the value of the greenback would plummet.

This begs a broader question. Is the dollar really strong today? Probably not.

This isn’t a spooky tale of woe worthy of “Trilateral Conspiracy” theories. It’s simply a matter of fact that America’s current national debt is over $49 trillion, according to the General Accounting Office’s 2005 numbers.

Believe me, we don’t have anything like that kind of money. And the only way to come up with it is to stamp endless reams of paper with oceans of green ink and call them dollars. That means further devaluation for months, probably years to come.

We are in no way the masters of our own destiny here. Indeed, individual American states dependent on federal spending are now having to turn over publicly built roads and tollways to the highest private bidder — often foreign companies.

For example, in Indiana, a consortium of foreign investors bought 75-year rights to a toll road for $3.8 billion.

Reportedly, the contract even exempted them from state and local taxes.

Texas has greenlighted the construction of a private toll road out of Austin. It, too, is a long-term deal with toll proceeds earmarked for foreign coffers.

Indiana and Texas are not alone. One at a time, states are learning that promised huge transportation funds from the federal government won’t be forthcoming. The money just isn’t there.

Why my emphasis on roads? Because they’re a symbol of American strength. Given that, it’s not hard to imagine that states may increasingly react to Uncle Sam’s lighter wallet by deciding to privatize other essential infrastructure. Publicly owned power plants or water-treatment facilities, perhaps, or other necessarily big-dollar entities potentially may become private businesses in the years to come, and often foreign-owned.

We’re a nation forced by debt to allow countries like China to undercut our prices of domestically produced manufactured goods. That means our tradition of world dominance in making “things” is a thing of the past.

In essence, we’re now being held hostage by oil-producing enemies. Their weapon of choice isn’t the nuclear bomb. It’s the slow erosion of our international monetary and manufacturing strength.

It shouldn’t have been a shock to anyone this week when we learned that our trade deficit is even bigger than we thought.

If it’s not a maxim already coined, allow me: The wisest way to conquer an enemy isn’t with bullets or bombs. The most lethal “trigger” is mastery of monetary-system imbalances.