They are Winning but We Have Not Lost

From the NY Times Review of “At the Center of the Storm,” By former DCI, George Tenet:

"Mr. Tenet expresses puzzlement that, since 2001, Al Qaeda has not sent “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half-dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” …“I do know one thing in my gut, Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”"

Yes sir, but your gut has proven to be completely and utterly unreliable. It is not worthy of our trust or consideration.

To a tin foil hat wearing nut like me, the terrorists have no need to attack our shopping malls. No need to disable the electrical grid. Although these acts could be easily carried out, they would do nothing that would further their overall strategy and might in fact, hurt their overall strategy. The targets on 9/11 were carefully chosen. The center of market capitalism and the executive branch of our government. These were symbolic targets. The symbolism being these were the perceived sources of the injustices at the root cause of terrorism.

In fact there is another reason not to attack shopping malls or infrastructure. The terrorists are already winning and the current course and policy is their most able ally:

1. We are slogging though a quagmire in Iraq costing us billions of dollars and thousands of lives, not to mentioned those injured and maimed. Both our own solders, and innocents who are caught in the way
2. We have lost all credibility and are no longer trusted in the community of nations. As a result our power is greatly diminished.
3. We have abused and broken our military. Von Clausewitz said the most effective military force is the one held in reserve, and we have no reserve.
4. We have lost the rule of law at home. We have rule by caveat, and signing statement. Not legislation. Our system of justice, once a beacon to the world, is now cited as an example of our hypocrisy.
   

From the long view, the result is our days as the world’s only superpower are numbered. Imagine... bringing down a superpower with 4 airplanes.

Had we reacted differently to the events of 2001 we would not be on this path. Had we reacted with determination in Afghanistan, and not gotten distracted in a war of choice in Iraq. Had we asked why? on more than just the superficial level, and implemented policies that would address root causes rather than just benefit certain special interests, we would not be on this path.

We can change course. The scale is past the tipping point but it is not fully tilted. We have not lost.

I recall this definition of insanity: To continue trying the same thing over and over, even though it has not worked in the past.

Image and Leadership

To get elected a politician has to win a popularity contest. That takes a different sort of character, especially in our age of mass media, instant media, and micro media where the blogosphere and Youtube can make a minor incident into an event in less than a day. Image is important to a politician but should it be the only thing they worry about? Why is it all we hear about?

The main stream media love image. Love it over policy. Policy requires thinking, image is emotional. Bush 43 got to be President because he was hand picked, groomed, and anointed, by the energy industry. The image projected was of a successful businessman, and competent Governor. A man who would run the government like a business and was still a regular guy. A guy you could go out and have a beer with. His opponent in 2000 had a different image. That of a boffo, wonkish, dreamer who could not make a joke and had an exaggerated sense of his own accomplishments.

Six years later, a large percentage of the electorate realize that what they got with Bush 43, was a childish, whiney, incompetent, who really did run the government for profit… the profit of the energy business. We also recognize Al Gore as a visionary and long for the competence of the Clinton administration.

Democrats just don’t get image. They don’t. Not in the sense of the larger electorate. They don’t understand that what the electorate wants is a leader. Someone who gets out there and talks about what they really believe and acts upon those beliefs. Politics is the art of the possible. We vast unwashed masses are not so stupid as to believe that a politician will lay out a vision and make it all happen. But we want to know what that vision is.

Bush 43 got into the White House by offering a vision of efficient well run government. It was a lie of course. Obvious to some even back then. But where is the visionary among the Democrats today? Why can’t one of the candidates punch through the image bubble and express their core beliefs in a way we can hear? Why is it that all we hear about is how much money they have raised, or the competition between Hillary and Obama for the black vote or Edwards’ $400 hair cut?

I make no bones about my feeling Richardson, or Gore, would be the best President. That is based on experience not leadership. We are choosing an image. A strong woman, a black man without baggage, a crusader who will fight on in spite of his wife’s illness. Are we really that shallow? Unfortunately yes. US weekly is the highest circulation magazine in the country followed by People. But we are only shallow because of the shallow choices we are offered.

We would pay attention to a leader. To someone like the guy John McCain, would like to be. Up front, here I am, like me or not this is what I believe and how I will act. Unfortunately, the highest money raisers are not leaders. They are ambitious, but not leaders. Leaders capture our imagination. They get us to follow. They create a shared dream. No, what we have is candidates without edges. So carefully manipulated that not a real word comes out of any of them, or their spouses or their staffs. Reading Maureen Dowd today, we find that Obama’s wife has the carefully crafted role of making her husband seem like the regular, real person he is not.

I don’t have any respect for the three most effective at raising money Democrats. I have no trust for the top 2. From my perspective here is what I would need to even consider supporting any of them:

Hillary- Admit that you would use the same style, and core staff, as your husband. Also reassure us as you did in ’92 that we get both of you. Tell me why I should expect my life to get any better if you are President. Prove to me you have not sold out to corporate interests. Convince me I am not supporting another Republican named Clinton.

Obama- Give me some substance. Specifics about what you would do on health care. How would you fix the middle class squeeze. Get us out of Iraq. Not just flowery platitudes about vision. I want specifics. I also want to know who is behind your rapid rise from obscurity. To me you are just another W from a different state, and in a different suit, hand picked, groomed, and anointed, by the energy and agribusiness industry.

Edwards- Cut off your hair. It is a distraction. If you want me to take you seriously show me you care more about your ideas than your image or your appearance. Get a buzz cut and show me you really want to be President for the right reasons. Right now I think it is just ego.

To all-Figure out a way to let me hear your vision. Your plan. Not the message the main stream media want me to hear. Not your image. What you really believe and want to accomplish to make this a better country for us, and a better world for all.

The True Test of Electability

This a reworked email from January 22, 2007. I am reposting it here because of questions I have received. It is probably worthwhile to review because not a lot has changed except the amount of money raised among the candidates:

It is interesting to think about the concept of electability. "On The Media" did an very good piece on Dennis Kucinich back in January, You can listen to it here: http://www.onthemedia.org/ (January 19, 2007)

It is increasingly apparent that the main stream news media try to effect who is "electable" by deciding which candidates get covered and how they are covered. I can't claim to understand the motives of the main stream news media, but I do know that competent government, and peace, don't sell as much advertising as incompetence and war.

Of the candidates on the Democratic side. Bill Richardson is both the most experienced and the most electable. While not the front runner today, it is often interesting to watch Iowa and New Hampshire knock people out of the front runner status.

I base my own electability statement on statistics. I know people don't want to believe statistics. Especially those in the news media, except when they suit the spin they want on the story. However, in the last 80 years, or during the lives of 99.997% of Americans alive today, we have elected exactly 1 person President, who was a Senator. Further in the last 60 years, only a single person claiming to be from a northern or eastern state has been elected President. ( In both cases that person was John F. Kennedy) Now, you may not want to believe the statistics, you may want to believe that this time it is different. Perpetuating that belief and covering the horse race, sells adverts. Here is the thing. Being the governor of a southwestern state gives Richardson something like a 5 to 1 advantage over the other candidates going in. Remember Bill Clinton? Governor of a small southern state? Didn't have a chance in 1992, before New Hampshire, did he? But he "stole" the Presidency from Bush 41.

So, perhaps we are seeing among the Democrats the race for vice President. This is the office Obama, and Hillary and Edwards really want, because serving as vice President makes one much more electable. Serving 8 years under a President Richardson, makes one a shoe in for the Presidency in 2016.

This is not the way the MSM will cover it, but the MSM have the credibility of used car salesmen. Also nothing in life is certain. There are only degrees of probability. But I tend to be 3 steps ahead of the rest of the world. I am not using a crystal ball either. Just history and numbers. Those have a way of being right 99.73%* of the time.

What Democrats need to do is to be more like Republicans in this respect: Stop being lead around by the news media. Democrats are not how the MSM portrays them. They just believe they are. If the Democrats would get behind a real candidate early, it would be amazing what we could accomplish. However, the divide and conquer strategy used by the conservatives and the MSM since 1975 has worked well, keeping liberal ideals from being institiutued.

*The 99.73% number is a statistical limit called the 3 sigma limit which defines a normal distribution. Within the 3 sigma limits events are distributed on a Gaussian (bell) curve around the mean. Events falling outside the 3 sigma limits are considered special cause events. They are very rare and extraordinary. From the standpoint of statistical theory, to elect a non male, or non European, Senator, (as opposed to Governor or Vice President) President would be truly extraordinary. Statistically our first woman or non european President will most likely be the Governor of a southern or western state, or as mentioned above someone who has served as vice President.

A Question of Values

I like John Edwards, I really do. I think he is a fine person who pulled himself up by the bootstraps and made a lot of money fighting for people who could not afford to fight for themselves unless a trial lawyer would take their case on contingency. I like some of his ideas too. But he is not Presidential material. Perhaps after serving 8 years as Gore’s VP he would have been, but he does not have enough experience in a large organization or a bureaucracy to be effective as President. Neither do Hillary, or Obama.

Then there is the hair thing. Edwards has a couple of problems. One he is a rich guy, and he acts like it. Or at least spends like it. $400 on a hair cut is beyond the sensibility of middle and lower class Americans. It is indicative of his larger sensibility, or lack thereof.

Democrats have a problem. They gravitate toward style and looks too much. They like pretty candidates, because they want candidates who look good on television and are therefore “elect able”. Democrats tend not to look so much at personal values when choosing candidates. Nor experience and competence, as the current crop of "front runners"demonstrates.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the majority of the electorate does pay attention to values. The value of a $400 hair cut is something I might appreciate in my trial Lawyer. Someone who is trying to win a multi million dollar settlement. But not in a chief executive who has more to worry about then how he looks to a jury. In a President I want to see some evidence of frugality. Some evidence that he or she will not spend our money willy nilly, like it is the play money of their previously outrageous income as a private citizen.

You know what? I bet Edwards could find a hair stylist that would charge him $30 for what he paid $400. It would be just as good too. Generic, not a name brand. I buy store brands to save money. That is a value I appreciate. Saving money is a value essential in our next President. It is a value Edwards seems not to hold, or even understand.

Root Cause?

Root cause analysis is a tool used in manufacturing to get beyond the superficial causes of an undesired outcome. It uses rigorous methodologies to get to the originating causes of a defect or problem. We use this systemic approach, because too often we humans tend to jump to the easily derived conclusions and only attempt to address those in our proposed solutions. One of the techniques we use is a 5 why. It is simple: Ask why? When you have an answer ask why? again. Repeat this 5 times and you are often close of one of the true root causes of the problem.

Why? Is a question we have been hearing a lot this week. I have found myself asking the same question, but because of my funny hat, I have found myself on a slightly different path:

The first why(1) is obvious. Cho was antisocial and mentally ill, resulting in anger or rage, which he acted upon with tragic results. Killing and maiming completely innocent people. Cho was angry at society in general which is what lead to him attacking a group/community rather than specific individuals.

Why?(2) I doubt it was for fame and glory as is the popular assumption in some circles. The people who want fame attack celebrities, John Lennon, Reagan, etc. Instead I would speculate that his anger at society was the result of his poor socialization and his inability to interact with others in what we would consider a normal modality. This inability to interact lead to increasing isolation, frustration and anger which must have been extremely painful. So, Cho was antisocial to the point of pain and blamed society at large for his pain.

Why?(3) There seems to be a parallel with Columbine here, in that while attending High School in Circleville Virginia, Cho was ostracized and bullied. Not only by his classmates, but from what I heard, also by his teachers, threatening him with an F if he did not read aloud etc. This is not a cause but a contributing factor. One that our culture does not seem to want to get into. When we are dealing with socially dysfunctional individuals it seems to be human nature to take the approach of isolating those individuals who do not fit in. These individuals disrupt the general harmony of the group, and require lots of additional resources to get them to make a positive contribution. While we cannot blame general human behavior for Cho’s inability to interact socially, we do need to recognize the importance of it in setting this individual on a path toward extreme action. What may have been a small problem early, snowballed into one that ended in Cho’s murderous rampage.

Why(4) was Cho unable to socialize in a more normal manner? We may never know for certain. He was obviously intelligent in the sense that he was able to learn and score well on tests. Did Cho have Asberger’s syndrome, a form or autism? Since his sister does not have obvious social development issues we cannot say it was the result of his disciplined upbringing (perhaps driven by his blue collar, immigrant parent’s, desire for a greater success for their children). It is apparent that Cho had a problem that went untreated for many years.

Why?(5) Did Cho’s school district have the resources to recognize and deal with social dysfunctional disorders? Did his parents have medical insurance that would cover his treatment? At this level there are only questions. Delving this deep we start to understand what may be one of the true root causes of what happened Monday in Virginia.

If we truly want to prevent this from happening in the future, we have to start here. As a society we cannot call ourselves civilized or compassionate if we choose to use peer pressure and ostracization to deal with social dysfunction. Outcasts sometimes form their own tribes where a wider degree non conformity is accepted. ( The presence and continued need for the word “outcast” in our language should signal that we as a society have a problem. ) Instead we tend to think of the problem being with individuals. In less contemporary times, individuals like Cho would have likely found themselves either dead at an early age, driven from the group into the wilderness to survive on his own, or if his parents were of sufficient power and stature, carefully protected.

If Cho had not taken his own life, he would have undoubtedly faced the death penalty in spite of his mental illness. Our ultimate solution to the problem is essentially the same as used by our ancestors. I guess the only difference is they were perhaps a little better at addressing the problem earlier rather than after the fact. Is this really the way we want to behave as a society? Or are these questions and the preventive actions too difficult for us?

I predict we will choose to ignore the root causes and concentrate on the superficial ones. Availability of guns, failings of the database integration that allowed Cho to easily get through the background check, the failure of the treatment process once his problem as a young adult was recognized. We will not go back to when Cho was 8 or 12 years old. We will not ask how we can help these individuals early and avoid the snowballing of poor social behavior, isolation, and increasing anger that can erupt into tragedy.

In the end we will choose to say this just happens sometimes and leave it at that. I predict this because of a commentary I heard on Wednesday. It was by a “friend” of the Columbine shooters. A fellow who was warned to leave school that fateful day 8 years ago. Already an outcast, after the killings he was further ostracized by his classmates for being a “friend”. It seems some lessons are very hard for us to learn. Especially when we don’t want to learn them.

Freedom?

Supreme Court ruling on abortion :

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: ''Today's decision is alarming,'' The ruling ''refuses to take ... seriously'' previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion. The decision ''tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.''

Stare decisis. Right! Justice Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts, expressed unwavering support for this principal during their confirmation hearings. I guess we could not see their fingers crossed behind their backs.

This is just another illustration of the hypocrisy of conservatism. While preaching “freedom” conservatives consistently seek to legislate or regulate moral behavior of individuals. To a conservative, freedom and liberty are economic terms. They have little meaning when it comes to individual freedom, be it reproductive, association, or sexual. Nor do conservatives seem to believe in the most fundamental freedoms laid out in the first amendment: Freedom to practice or not practice the religion of one’s choice, and freedom to express one’s views. Instead they want freedom to accumulate as much wealth as they can, with little interference from government, or the courts, or the torte system, and without regard for the greater good.

In spite of the current propaganda from the religious right, many of the framers were deists not Christians and had good reason to insure the United States did not become a theocracy. The argument that the separation of Church and State is to prevent government interference in religion and not religion getting involved in government is specious. How can it possibly make any sense? In essence we have religion involved in government because our elected officials may have religious beliefs which effect their decisions and choices. How could anyone possibly ask for anything more?

As with all things there is a level of balance. As Ogden Nash said: “My freedom ends where the other guy's nose begins.” We create and accept laws that restrict some personal freedom because we want a more orderly and stable society. When those laws come from the right they are aimed at individual behavior and defining moral values in a way that regulate behaviors having no effect on anyone except the individual. When laws are proposed from the left they tend to be aimed at groups like corporations who’s behavior is causing harm to large numbers of individuals.

Freedom is difficult to define, but I know it when I see it. What conservatives want ain’t it.

Time for a Collective Time Out

It is really awful what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech. I think we, and especially the news media, need a collective time out. You see, whenever something like this happens, journalists go into a feeding frenzy that just proves over and over what idiots they are. They ask the same questions over and over, to which there are no answers. Not yet at least. So let’s take a time out for a few days. Let the police do their job, quit second guessing the university administration, who though unfortunate lack of clairvoyance, were unable to predict that a person run amok would take a two hour break from his rampage. And if anyone wants to tell the news media how they feel, let them seek out the reporters . I am sure they are easy to find.

At the same time we need to put this in perspective. 33 people is a very small number of deaths when you consider how many people are dieing every day in Iraq, Darfur, Zimbabwe, and even the United States from violence.

Why does the news media tend to fixate on these sorts of events? Well let’s put it this way, they don’t suspend their adverts during their coverage. So it is just another form of manipulation.

Let’s take a time out. Turn off your TV, put the tragedy in perspective, and for gosh sakes quit calling this sort of thing a spree! Journalists are !&*@! glorified English majors for Pete’s sake. They should know the definition of a spree.

Tax and Spend

Tomorrow is tax day leading me to think about where the money we pay in taxes goes. It is interesting that until 2002 the Government Printing Office printed a booklet called “The Citizens Guide to the Federal Budget”. 2002 was the last fiscal year this was published. Still it is interesting:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/citizensguide.html

In FY 2002 we spent more than $300 billion on national defense, but also over $200 billion on health and $188 billion on interest. Transportation, were lots of the “pork” is found amounted to a paltry $55 billion of a budget of over $2 trillion.

The thing that is missing from all of this. The thing absent is us. That is, you and me. We don’t talk about national priorities anymore. Instead we have been dragged down into the nitty gritty detail that distracts us from the bigger picture. Putting on my tin foil hat I wonder if this is not a part of the plan. I wonder why this concise, easily understood booklet was only published once by the current administration in their first year in office?

I have my own ideas about were we should spend our taxes. The thing is I am not interested in anything specific. I am interested in broad priorities, not specific programs. But we don’t talk about those broad priorities any more. It is as if so much of the $2 trillion is already spoken for that all we can discuss is the loose change. Why is that?

One other interesting part of this publication is the break down of sources of funds the government spends. In FY 2002, 49% came from individual income taxes. Only 10% came from corporate income taxes. I wonder what the 2006 break down looked like?

Tomorrow is tax day. Perhaps a good day to write our represenatives and let them know about our broad priorities. Sure we cannot change things overnight. We all benefit from stability. But if it were my money to spend, I think I might spend it a little differently. I would not necessarally reduce what there is to spend, but might change where it comes from and where it goes.

Imagine if we could choose where our money goes. If you could allocate your taxes to what we thought was important as individuals. Very democratic. I wonder what we would decide?

Green Greed

I heard Thomas Freidman interviewed on PRI Marketplace. A regular reader of the NY Times opinion section knows the flat worlder, married to a billionaire, Freidman, has gone green.

More than a decade ago it was obvious to European governments and some European corporations that developing, manufacturing, and selling, green technology, would be a tremendous economic stimulus. Not just obvious to European governments either. To a tin foil hat wearing nut, like me, it was pretty obvious too.

When you think about outlandish conspiracy theories, the idea that global warming was concocted to ruin the U.S. economy has to rank up there with the idea that the moon landings were a hoax, and that Elvis Presley is alive and living in Kalamazoo.

So why did it take so long for the economic elites like Freidman to go green? Why did they continue to push the idea, though the mainstream media they control, that the science was inconclusive or worse that it was just a big conspiracy? The simple answer is short term greed. And that is just it isn’t it? Greed, avarice, lust for money and wealth. Freidman actually said on marketplace, that greed is good. But then he started talking out of the other side of his mouth and said that government regulation was needed to stimulate the development of green technology. Hmmm, so government actually may play a positive role in economic stimulus?

So why now? Why have the economics of controlling greenhouse gasses suddenly become so obvious to the economic elites of the United States? In all honesty I don’t really know except that greed is the underlying factor. Still this is a classic example of a tipping point. Was it Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”? I don’t know. Still I find it amazing the astounding change in attitudes we have seen in just 2 years.

Putting on my funny hat, I speculate that the elites finally came to an consensus at a place like Davos in ‘06. They realized that global warming was a threat to their long term wealth and power. Elites don’t like radical change. They may actually remember the lessons of the French revolution. Perhaps this realization canceled out their short term greed?

I think about Isaac Asmov’s character Harry Sheldon, and the hypothesis of psychohistory. The statistician in me knows that all stable systems are predictable. They vary randomly within 3 sigma limits. An unstable system has points outside those three sigma limits. The application of these statistical principals to human events is the basis for Asmov’s idea. If I were a greedy billionaire, motivated by the accumulation of wealth, I would probably have some smart economists and statisticians working for me. They would understand the theory of Gaussian distribution. These smart people would be looking for real trends in the system. Keep in mind that a trend is not intuitive. A true trend is based upon mathematical principals and very strict rules. It requires an understanding of statistical theory to recognize a real trend, as opposed to normal random variation in a system. Soooo... Maybe someone recognized a trend? The system was on the verge of instability and it was time to stop the manipulation? Time to let the system fall back into its’ natural order.

This is the problem with greed. If the world economy is based on greed and the accumulation of wealth there will always be those who try and suceed manipulating the system to their own advantage. To my mind we need to tolerate greed but not embrace it as Freidman does. Too much of anything is never good. To overindulge is always unhealthy. We as a species need to seek balance and harmony. The past 25 years have seen an imbalance on the side of unregulated greed. The bad that has come of this far outweighs the good.

The Greatest Generation, lived through the great depression, saw the rise of fascism and fought “the war”. The majority of this generation came away from those experiences believing that together we could create a better world. Sure they made mistakes: For instance“Better living through chemistry.” was not completly true. But the wisdom of their experience has been lost, and those of us boomers who believe in the ideal of the majority of our parents generation have fallen into the minority. While our parents will be remembered as great we will be remembered as greedy and easily manipulated. Green greed. Well if that is what it takes. But would it not have been better if 15 years ago we had started to make changes in the way we live? Started the efforts to cut greenhose gasses back then? I remember having discussions about this problem way back then. Instead our politicians and the corporations decided on short term profit and more wealth for those who already have enough. Public opinion in this country was manipulated toward that end. Here we are today.

When it comes to the greater good, greed and free markets simply do not work.

Tumbling Tumbling Down

The MSM calls it an "implosion", but to my mind the house of cards is falling down under the weight of all the lies. Now we learn that White House staff used RNC email accounts to avoid the Presidential Records Act. Reading Paul Krugman today we find the executive branch has been infiltrated by a certain brand of religious extremist. Then there is the whole Paul Wolfawitz/World Bank/girlfriend thing. To me the scary thing is these people are out of control but still in control. I fear it will take a long time to undo the damage they have done.

Many blame this on incompetence. To my mind it has been the strategy of this administration from the beginning. The idea has been to reduce our faith in government by making it not work. As much as I disliked Bill Clinton, I have to say that his administration made the government work, and work as well as it had in a generation. The theme of the conservative movement is: Government is the problem, not a part of the solution. Well I guess that begs the question: What is the solution? Letting the marketplace decide? Hah! Begging the question: What is the problem? For conservatives it is certainly not creating a better life for all.

I think the framers got it right. I continually amazed at their brilliant foresight. We now get to witness the checks and balances they envisioned work in real time. A slow process, but in any system stability does not come with rapid change .

Vonnegut

The greatest living American author is no longer living… So it goes…

If there is a crono-synclastic infundebulum, he knows now.

Exit Strategy

I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve the problem that is Iraq. It is a tough one. I listened to McCain’s VMI speech. Heard what he had to say and don’t doubt his sincerity. I just think he and everyone else has it wrong. The best solution is Iraq is the solution that is best for the Iraqis. Not for the United States or for those our government proxies. A while ago I suggested that we try doing this:

1. Pull out our troops and as we do this…

2. Take the $70 billion we plan to spend on the war over the next year and give it to the 26.7 million Iraqis in cash, amounting to $2621.72 for every person in Iraq. Not to the government or to Halliburton. To every individual man woman and child. (think fingertips dipped in indelible ink)

3. Promise the Iraqis if they can get their act together, we will give them all the same amount again next year.

4. And the year after that if they make satisfactory progress.

This still makes sense. It should work about as well as anything we’ve tried or proposed to date. This is the free market solution. If the Iraqis want a peaceful well run country they will vote in the marketplace. They will figure it out, and all we will do is provide incentive. Is it perfect? No, but for a generous $150 per person (that’s $4 billion) we should be able to manage this (as long as we don’t contract it out). A great exit strategy. Who would want to kill anyone giving away money as they leave? Plus our risk is equal to only 1 more year of war funding if we don't get a desired result.