LIFE IN THE GREED ZONE: ARE CUBANS ALLOWED?

When a report out of Baghdad came rumbling over the transom from Fred just now, I thought it might be something about the American soldiers captured by the Iraqi insurgents. It wasn't. Nor was it about the spiraling costs of Bush's absolutely catastrophic war. It wasn't even about Paul Brinkley's much-maligned attempts to get the Iraqi economy running again, something that is of great concern to Fred.

Brinkley and his colleagues at the Pentagon believe that rehabilitating shuttered, state-run enterprises could reduce violence by employing tens of thousands of Iraqis. Officials at State counter that the initiative is antithetical to free-market reforms the United States should promote in Iraq.

The bureaucratic knife fight over the best way to revive Iraq's moribund economy illustrates how the two principal players in the reconstruction of Iraq-- the departments of Defense and State-- remain at odds over basic economic and political measures. The bickering has hamstrung initiatives to promote stability four years after Saddam Hussein's fall.

Nope; instead it could be filed under "Life Goes On In The Good Ole U.S.A. Greed Zone. And Fred's commentary? "Baghdad's Cigar Aficionado Club; the pictures say it all."