I was struck by an aside in Fareed Zakaria’s typically sane op-ed in today’s Washington Post. he says that the $20 billion to be spent on Iraqi infrastructure in the next year amounts to one half of that country’s GNP. The scale of generosity boggles the mind – especially since the lion’s share of the damage was done by Saddam Hussein, not by the war. I wonder how it compares to the sums spent in, say, Germany after the Second World War? Maybe someone out there has an analysis.
RAINES AWARD NOMINEE: Who says we can’t keep an award for a legend in media bias? Here’s the Guardian today on the Israel-Palestinian impasse:
The militant groups abandoned the truce on August 21 after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader in a missile strike that followed a suicide bombing which killed 22 people in Jerusalem.
Wouldn’t that chronology suggest that the truce was ended first by the suicide bombing – or would that imply that Israel isn’t always at fault? (For a summary of this blogs various awards, click here.)
The Dish 