And he kept coming back and coming back and coming back.

I guess "coming back" means "continuing to draw air into his lungs while maintaining an uninterrupted heartbeat" in this case. Or perhaps "refusing to spend his days in a fetal position whimpering in the corner".

Because it's really hard to see how he made any sort of comeback in any of the traditional senses of the word.

Oh, wait - "there was no evidence that he gave up ambition". Still thinking those subversive thoughts, eh, Saddam? I hate it when a peon doesn't recognize the abject futility of life under Uncle Sam's bootheel and continues to struggle. Makes the whole exercise seem rather inelegant. Tsk tsk.

Hmm. Saddam refuses to sell oil to the west? Unlikely.

Saddam, as head of his country, has more control of the oil and Big Oil has less control? More likely.

We're not talking about some ghastly shutdown of the flow of oil to America. In fact, a couple of decades of sanctions and wars has done a damned good job of shutting down oil from Iraq. No, we're talking about Big Oil, the Oil Party, the Boodle Boys, BushCo, the merged CIA/EXXON cabal, who wanted Saddam out not because he wouldn't sell oil, but because he would. That would drive down profits.

So all the maiming and killing, all the wasted money, all ethnic cleansing, the destruction of law and Constitutional rights, all of that has been done in the name of profits.

As Leonard Cohen once sang, "I have seen the future. It is murder."

For Greenspan it is all about maintaining the system which translates into English as it is all about us, me, me, me. No one else matters but the ruling class and the American way. Exactly why we are so crucial to the world escapes me at the moment. Like most Americans all I need is my bananas and a tree to sit in.

The central banker's position and influence in our society. Discuss. No really, please -- I'd like to hear how important Greenspan was or wasn't in driving the US foreign policy, both in the Clinton and Bush administrations. Then he explains how securing resources through war helps globalization and free trade flourish.

For the world, I can't think of either Bush or Bubba as authors of the free-trade, globalization meme. In this week's Meet The Press, Greenspan goes on about his concern that the globalization backlash would do the opposite of what's good (in Alan Greenspan's view).

MR. RUSSERT: You also said this: “The Bill Clinton administration was a pretty centrist party. But they’re not governing again. The next administration may have the Clinton administration name but the Democratic Party has moved very significantly in the wrong direction.” Hillary Clinton’s party is not Bill Clinton’s party?

MR. GREENSPAN: All I can say is that they’re taking positions which he, as president, veered away from.

MR. RUSSERT: Such as?

MR. GREENSPAN: Whole area of trade, for example, which is a very critical issue because it’s not only the issue of trade, it refers to the globalization and how one views what is the driving force in this world which creates prosperity. [ ... later ]

MR. GREENSPAN: I was expressing my view. Saddam Hussein was obviously seeking to get a chokehold on the Straits of Hormuz, where about 18 million barrels a day flow from the Middle East to the industrial world. Had he been able to get ahold of a nuclear weapon and indeed move through Kuwait and into Saudi Arabia and control the Straits of Hormuz, it would’ve caused chaos.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: What evidence was there that Saddam Hussein had acquired or was trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, or was trying to get a chokehold on the Straits of Hormuz?

MR. GREENSPAN: There was no evidence he had a nuclear weapon because, my judgment is, he would’ve expressed that he had it and that would’ve created a real problem. You have to watch that man over 30 years. First of all, let me just say that it’s very clear, if there were no oil under the sands of Iraq, he would never have gotten the wherewithal, the resources to effectively threaten his neighbors and essentially potentially threaten the rest of the world through a global shortage of oil, which he could’ve done. The evidence I have is I watched him, one, come up against Iran but moving on Kuwait, threatening Saudi Arabia. And what his actions, as I observed them year after year, conclude, led me to conclude, he was clearly trying to get control of Middle East oil. Now, the thought of him in control of Middle East oil and then, with his resources, being able to buy a nuclear device, I found scary. And, indeed, having him out of power was critical to me. Whether he was deposed by internal means or by war or anything was less important to me than he left.

Well, that raises a fascinating problem about the issue of the morality and the whole concept of preventive wars.

dear(not really) Mr Greenspan

it's not a problem. it's fucking illegal as hell, and in no way, shape, form, general direction or through quantum fucking entaglement is it moral.

and to think you were chairman of the goddamned fed. no wonder we are all screwed right now.

Excellent debate between Greenspan and Naomi Klein on today's Democracy Now here

Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine goes a long way to explaining the motivations for the Iraq war, IMO.

It wasn't just about oil, but about forcing an entirely new free-market economic model on the Iraqi people, just as the same model was forced on the Chilean people under Pinochet. Bremer's initial "reform" orders weren't just about "liberalizing" the Iraqi oil industry, but about shutting down all government-owned industry, cutting taxes, opening Iraq up to foreign investment and ownrship, etc.

The advocates of the Iraq war thought all this would be a great success, and Iraq would become a model of free-market capitalism that would revolutionize the Middle East.

My own take on this is that Rumsfeld and Cheney, as former CEO's, looked at Iraq as an underperforming company, that, under new management, could be made much more efficient and profitable for everyone, and especially for themselves.

Right now the best thing that could happen to allen greenspan would be, during their next bout of mutual oral sexual delectation, Ms. Mitchell's uterus would collapse and smother him.
But mebbe that's just me...

In the mid-nineties German banker Hermann Ab (I believe his name was) passed away and there was a glowing obit in the NYTimes. There was even a quote from David Rockefeller calling him the "most important banker of our time." Something like that. Ab was the head of Hitler's Deutsche Bank during WWII, when Germany invaded Europe and essentially looted national treasuries. Much of West Germany's post-war success came from all that they stole.

Also on his resume: Ab sat on the board of IG Farben and was in on the discussion the day that they decided on the location of Auschwitz. What many people don't remember is that the camp provided slave labor to nearby factories.

A great banker. Just like David Rockefeller. Just like Greenspan.

In the mid-nineties German banker Hermann Ab (I believe his name was) passed away and there was a glowing obit in the NYTimes. There was even a quote from David Rockefeller calling him the "most important banker of our time." Something like that. Ab was the head of Hitler's Deutsche Bank during WWII, when Germany invaded Europe and essentially looted national treasuries. Much of West Germany's post-war success came from all that they stole.

Also on his resume: Ab sat on the board of IG Farben and was in on the discussion the day that they decided on the location of Auschwitz. What many people don't remember is that the camp provided slave labor to nearby factories.

A great banker. Just like David Rockefeller. Just like Greenspan.

Are you allowed to assert on this site, tagged onto the Rob Payne declaration," No one else matters but the ruling class and the American way"
"the American way also as an adjunct to Israeli
hegemony over the Middle East?" Greenspan whether a "lite Zionist" or further right is thusly motivated.

Re: SteveB

This "Emerald City" article by Rajiv Chandrasekaran from last year describes the scene:

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

To recruit the people he wanted, O'Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience. Smith said O'Beirne once pointed to a young man's résumé and pronounced him "an ideal candidate." His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

As more and more of O'Beirne's hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA's headquarters in Hussein's marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and "Operation Iraqi Freedom" garb, "Bush-Cheney 2004" T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

Greenspan obviously has a different take on recent Middle East history than the rest of us. There was no way Saddam could have done anything to get a 'chokehold' on the Straits of Hormuz. First up he didn't have much of a navy, secondly most of his airforce was pretty useless being as it was being constantly watched in case it entered the no-fly zones and because it suffered major shortages of spare parts due of the sanctions regime, thirdly both Saudi Arabia and Iran (not to mention the American presence) have extensive air defence systems and wouldn't have let him affect their own oil movements. Also on the subject of Saudi, instead of being 'threatened' as Greenspan contends, in fact they had a non-aggression pact with Iraq. So where does he get this stuff from? It can only be coming from thin air or from highly biased briefings.

I would like to have seen somebody ask Greenie about

a) To what extent did Saddam's pricing of oil in Euros affect both the U.S. dollar and CheneyCo's brilliant decision to launch the Blitzkrieg to Baghdad?

b) Since you're a staunch free marketeer, why didn't you let the stock market's "irrational exuberance" run its free market course? And why the hell would you raise general interest rates instead of margin rates? You weren't trying to affect an election, were you?

It would have been interesting to watch an old white guy break both ankles trying to tap dance his way around the answers.

Are you allowed to assert on this site, tagged onto the Rob Payne declaration," No one else matters but the ruling class and the American way" "the American way also as an adjunct to Israeli hegemony over the Middle East?" Greenspan whether a "lite Zionist" or further right is thusly motivated.

Sounds like someone needs to catch up on his Mort Zuckerman. I'm loath to link HuffPost, but it is the neu mainstream, no?

CHARLIE ROSE: And you say?

ALAN GREENSPAN: And I say I am conflicted by this issue. I don't know how I would come out. I can see the arguments on both sides.

THIS SIDE
global warming risk lowered
peak oil vulnerability lowered
resource wars averted through tech development
restoration of land and oceans
lots of money for things people want done

THAT SIDE
dead people