{"id":1634,"date":"2008-04-03T15:02:59","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T22:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2008\/04\/a_most_utantial_weapon\/"},"modified":"2013-05-11T13:52:42","modified_gmt":"2013-05-11T17:52:42","slug":"a_most_utantial_weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2008\/04\/a_most_utantial_weapon.html","title":{"rendered":"A Most $ub$tantial Weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It takes 1,750 words on Maliki&#8217;s Basra screwup to get to the money (and the money graf).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But there it is, finally &#8212;\u00a0the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2007\/1108\/p01s04-wome.html\">bribes to the tribes<\/a>, a key tactic used by the U.S. military to suppress the Iraqi insurgency &#8212;\u00a0in the next-to-last paragraph of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/03\/world\/middleeast\/03basra.html?ref=world\">today&#8217;s NYT frontpager<\/a>: Maliki was pressed by U.S.\u00a0officials\u00a0&#8220;to seek an alliance with the Shiite tribes, as the Americans had done with Sunni tribes in the so-called Anbar Awakening.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>The last paragraph\u00a0quotes U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker:\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\" style=\"MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px\">\n<p>&#8220;We strongly encouraged him to use his most substantial weapon, which is money, to announce major jobs programs, Basra cleanup, whatnot,&#8221;\u00a0Mr. Crocker said. &#8220;And to do what he decided to do on his own: pay tribal figures to effectively finance an awakening for Basra.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You can tell from the <em><strong>whatnot<\/strong><\/em> that Crocker isn&#8217;t talking about anything, really, except bribes. As\u00a0to Maliki doing anything\u00a0<em><strong>on his own,<\/strong><\/em> except screwing up, that&#8217;s pure &#8216;ganda talk, too. Such are the arrangements of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2008\/02\/our_subprime_war.html\">our subprime war<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It takes 1,750 words on Maliki&#8217;s Basra screwup to get to the money (and the money graf).\u00a0 But there it is, finally &#8212;\u00a0the bribes to the tribes, a key tactic used by the U.S. military to suppress the Iraqi insurgency &#8212;\u00a0in the next-to-last paragraph of today&#8217;s NYT frontpager: Maliki was pressed by U.S.\u00a0officials\u00a0&#8220;to seek an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-qm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}