Pentagon scraps world-event bets Boxer wants ouster of officials...

Pentagon scraps world-event bets
Boxer wants ouster of officials behind futures-trading plan

Snip
Washington -- Facing a hailstorm of criticism from Democrats and Republicans, the Bush administration abruptly pulled the plug Tuesday on a proposed Pentagon research project to allow investors to make bets on the probabilities of terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups in the Middle East.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 official, told a Senate committee he had only learned about the program by reading the morning papers. He said it would immediately be scrapped.

"I share your shock at this kind of program," Wolfowitz said.

But Senate Democrats, led by Barbara Boxer of California, said they were not satisfied with the administration's response. Boxer called on the Pentagon to fire the officials who created the futures market, which would have allowed traders to buy and sell contracts on, for example, the prospects of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat being assassinated or King Abdullah II of Jordan being overthrown.

"There is something very sick about it," Boxer told Wolfowitz at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq. "If it's going to end, I think you would end the careers of whoever it was who thought that up, because terrorists, knowing they were planning an attack, could have bet on the attack and collected a lot of money. It is a sick idea."

more...
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/30/TERROR.TMP

a good chunk of all that money approved by Congress for the Pentagon goes. What other dark corners and black ops need illumination?

be locked up, not only impeached or dismissed. Otherwise they continue to thrive in the shadows to spread their sickness another day. Poindexter should have been locked up after the Iran/Contra subterfuge. Now we have a second chance to do what should have been done all those years ago. DO IT!!

This guy is a Vonnegut character brought to vivid, horrifying life. He's so far out in left field they couldn't reign him in if they tried. I think there should be a Poindexter Act barring people like him from serving in any government.

That is unless you meant that he is so far gone that he crossed the date line and is now jjust outside the stadium on the other side.

I think these delusional neo-cons thought they could get away with their very own virtual coluseum, complete with thumbs up/down betting on the gladiators....

...they give them a job.

- The article mentions that Poindexter's reputation was tarnished during Iran/Contra. That's an understatement. He's a convicted felon.

With his tarnished rep you'd think they wouldn't have touched him with a 10-foot pole!

Our "esteemed" ambassador to the UN, for one.

MY SENATOR, JEFF BINGAMAN, WANTS POINDEXTER OUT TOO!!

I agree this dude is out of control.

that Wolfie knew nothing about it before he read it in the paper? Give me a break!

I have a theory but there are a few holes in it i.e. the political fallout when the scheme became public.

If you want to make a threat against someone, you can just go round to see him and threaten them face to face, or possibly you can let the person find out about the threat via a back channel. It could be that the threat via the back channel may have a bit of potency added because it is received via a shady source so there is the element of the unknown mixed in and it also allows the person being threatened imagination to go to work as it is not hard facts he is dealing with.

Perhaps when bush* wanted to put pressure on the Saudis about a year ago a meeting of the Defence Policy Board was called and details of the anti-Saudi presentation were somehow leaked to the press.

Perhaps there was never any idea that this futures market was going to go public, I don't know but for me if I was a futures trader there seems to be an element of 'teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs' about the site. It seems designed so that any Tom, Dick and Harry can understand it i.e makes it easier for a journalist to write an article about and gets it pasted all over the internet.

Which makes the target of this back-handed threat the Jordanian royal family from what I have seen of the site.

It is just that i have trouble beleiving that even someone in bush*'s government could be stupid enough to think up this garbage for real, possibly I'm wrong.

a pretty dire idea even as a threat delivery vehicle.

Bettin' on death, yee ha!

as of earlier this evening.

Next?

Now that we know this is how their minds work, we might as well ask...

Let's have an investigation!

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker/index.html