Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/international/middleeast/21battle.html?

In Falluja, Young Marines Saw the Savagery of an Urban War
By DEXTER FILKINS

FALLUJA, Iraq - Eight days after the Americans entered the city on foot, a pair of marines wound their way up the darkened innards of a minaret, shot through with holes by an American tank.

As the marines inched upward, a burst of gunfire rang down, fired by an insurgent hiding in the top of the tower. The bullets hit the first marine in the face, his blood spattering the marine behind him. The marine in the rear tumbled backward down the stairwell, while Lance Cpl. William Miller, age 22, lay in silence halfway up, mortally wounded.

"Miller!" the marines called from below. "Miller!"

With that, the marines' near mystical commandment against leaving a comrade behind seized the group. One after another, the young marines dashed into the minaret, into darkness and into gunfire, and wound their way up the stairs.

After four attempts, Corporal Miller's lifeless body emerged from the tower, his comrades choking and covered with dust. With more insurgents closing in, the marines ran through volleys of machine-gun fire back to their base.

"I was trying to be careful, but I was trying to get him out, you know what I'm saying?" Lance Cpl. Michael Gogin, 19, said afterward.

So went eight days of combat for this Iraqi city, the most sustained period of street-to-street fighting that Americans have encountered since the Vietnam War. The proximity gave the fighting a hellish intensity, with soldiers often close enough to look their enemies in the eyes.

For a correspondent who has covered a half dozen armed conflicts, including the war in Iraq since its start in March 2003, the fighting seen while traveling with a frontline unit in Falluja was a qualitatively different experience, a leap into a different kind of battle.

From the first rockets vaulting out of the city as the marines moved in, the noise and feel of the battle seemed altogether extraordinary; at other times, hardly real at all. The intimacy of combat, this plunge into urban warfare, was new to this generation of American soldiers, but it is a kind of fighting they will probably see again: a grinding struggle to root out guerrillas entrenched in a city, on streets marked in a language few American soldiers could comprehend.

The price for the Americans so far: 51 dead and 425 wounded, a number that may yet increase but that already exceeds the toll from any battle in the Iraq war.

Marines in Harm's Way

The 150 marines with whom I traveled, Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, had it as tough as any unit in the fight. They moved through the city almost entirely on foot, into the heart of the resistance, rarely protected by tanks or troop carriers, working their way through Falluja's narrow streets with 75-pound packs on their backs.

In eight days of fighting, Bravo Company took 36 casualties, including 6 dead, meaning that the unit's men had about a one-in-four chance of being wounded or killed in little more than a week.

The sounds, sights and feel of the battle were as old as war itself, and as new as the Pentagon's latest weapons systems. The eerie pop from the cannon of the AC-130 gunship, prowling above the city at night, firing at guerrillas who were often only steps away from Americans on the ground. The weird buzz of the Dragon Eye pilotless airplane, hovering over the battlefield as its video cameras beamed real-time images back to the base.

The glow of the insurgents' flares, throwing daylight over a landscape to help them spot their targets: us.

The nervous shove of a marine scrambling for space along a brick wall as tracer rounds ricocheted above.

The silence between the ping of the shell leaving its mortar tube and the explosion when it strikes.

The screams of the marines when one of their comrades, Cpl. Jake Knospler, lost part of his jaw to a hand grenade.

"No, no, no!" the marines shouted as they dragged Corporal Knospler from the darkened house where the bomb went off. It was 2 a.m., the sky dark without a moon. "No, no, no!"

Nothing in the combat I saw even remotely resembled the scenes regularly flashed across movie screens; even so, they often seemed no more real.

Mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades began raining down on Bravo Company the moment its men began piling out of their troop carriers just outside Falluja. The shells looked like Fourth of July bottle rockets, sailing over the ridge ahead as if fired by children, exploding in a whoosh of sparks.

Whole buildings, minarets and human beings were vaporized in barrages of exploding shells. A man dressed in a white dishdasha crawled across a desolate field, reaching behind a gnarled plant to hide, when he collapsed before a burst of fire from an American tank.

Sometimes the casualties came in volleys, like bursts of machine-gun fire. On the first morning of battle, during a ferocious struggle for the Muhammadia Mosque, about 45 marines with Bravo Company's Third Platoon dashed across 40th Street, right into interlocking streams of fire. By the time the platoon made it to the other side, five men lay bleeding in the street.

The marines rushed out to get them, as they would days later in the minaret, but it was too late for Sgt. Lonny Wells, who bled to death on the side of the road. One of the men who braved gunfire to pull in Sergeant Wells was Cpl. Nathan Anderson, who died three days later in an ambush.

Sergeant Wells's death dealt the Third Platoon a heavy blow; as a leader of one of its squads, he had written letters to the parents of its younger members, assuring them he would look over them during the tour in Iraq.

"He loved playing cards," Cpl. Gentian Marku recalled. "He knew all the probabilities."

More than once, death crept up and snatched a member of Bravo Company and quietly slipped away. Cpl. Nick Ziolkowski, nicknamed Ski, was a Bravo Company sniper. For hours at a stretch, Corporal Ziolkowski would sit on a rooftop, looking through the scope on his bolt-action M-40 rifle, waiting for guerrillas to step into his sights. The scope was big and wide, and Corporal Ziolkowski often took off his helmet to get a better look.

Tall, good-looking and gregarious, Corporal Ziolkowski was one of Bravo Company's most popular soldiers. Unlike most snipers, who learned to shoot growing up in the countryside, Corporal Ziolkowski grew up near Baltimore, unfamiliar with guns. Though Baltimore boasts no beach front, Corporal Ziolkowski's passion was surfing; at Camp Lejeune, N.C., Bravo Company's base, he would often organize his entire day around the tides.

"All I need now is a beach with some waves," Corporal Ziolkowski said, during a break from his sniper duties at Falluja's Grand Mosque, where he killed three men in a single day.

During that same break, Corporal Ziolkowski foretold his own death. The snipers, he said, were now among the most hunted of American soldiers.

Posted by: lise at November 21, 2004 02:43 PM

There was an article a month or so ago, by a western journalist in Baghdad. He/she described the talk about journalists and other westerners, as they realized that the only possible route out of Iraq from Baghdad was by the airport. By a road was under frequent attack, and which might at anytime be blocked for anything but large Army units.

Posted by: Barry at November 21, 2004 04:04 PM

It's a question of priorities. There aren't enough troops in Iraq to secure every possible location. There's already a whole lot securing the Green Zone. If, in addition, you detach enough to secure the road, then you don't have enough to secure Fallujah. What's more important?

Posted by: jam at November 21, 2004 04:46 PM

And what miracle will need to take place before there is "progress"?

Posted by: sm at November 21, 2004 05:13 PM

jam says it's a matter of priorities. When one of your primary communications routes is not secured, that should be a priority. Ask any military man--without logistics, you become hors de combat rather quickly when the ammo, food, and water run out.

That Bush and Rummy still refuse to commit the needed manpower to get the job done tells us all we need to know about how seriously they take this situation. Only the most callous and uncaring commander would send his troops in, and leave them in, with no hope of victory. It is a truly stunning mix of arrogance, incompetence, and callousness when the commander then refuses to reinforce those troops.

At this point, truly nothing short of a miracle will make this nightmare stop. The elections may or may not happen, but the "insurgency" will continue drawing blood and sucking treasure for as long as American troops are in Iraq.

Posted by: Derelict at November 21, 2004 05:27 PM

Before the invasion Americans could travel in Iraq a be reasonably safe. Mr Bush has made Iraq unsafe for Americans and all westerners.

Our troops can leave and Iraqis will hate us and Iraq will be unsafe for Americans.
or
Our troops can stay and the Iraqis will hate us and Iraq will be unsafe for Americans.

Iraq is lost.

Posted by: bakho at November 21, 2004 05:31 PM

The miracle of tactical nukes.

Posted by: will renege at November 21, 2004 05:32 PM

The good question is when will the waylayings and kidnappings start in the US (not by Arab insurgents, but domestic gangs). We are probably a good number of years off, but who knows.

As it looks to me in a big-picture way, the only way left to truly pacify Iraq and build a working social order is to bring in international interests, troops, and money, and inject a lot of US funds to improve people's immediate living and offer them a demonstrable perspective (if you're cynical you may call it buying them off; I prefer to call it more positively viewed from their side). Some will say it's giving in to terrorism (including a number of terrorists who will feel encouraged to extort more payoffs), but that's why you include a whip/stick with the carrot, to make it clear that the only way to participate in the goodies is by cooperation.

Same applies to the whole region, most notably Israel/Palestine. I have seen early-1900's (?) German OT/NT Bibles including maps that depict the area by the name of Palestine, biblical city names & references and all. Knowing as a German what war crimes and "civilian" injustices were perpetrated against European Jews over the centuries (by all European nations not just Germany BTW), I can extend a lot of empathy towards Israelis, many of which live in quite unenviable circumstances, terrorism, domestic fear-mongering and all.

But as in so many other circumstances, the stick alone will not help. If you're not offering a carrot, what is the difference on the other side between being struck with the stick twice or thrice? Even if you conveniently leave aside the fact that we are talking about people here who just want to carve out a bit of peace and livelihood for their families, and pursue happiness.

This is where I would like to quote the famous French proverb, "live and let live". if you are not willing to afford to "the other side" a similiar way of living as you claim for yourself, as interpreted in their ways not yours, then what kind of cooperation are you really expecting of them? Maybe one thing that is not French and that people can relate to better is "give and take". What kind of "take" are you expecting without a "give"?

Posted by: cm at November 21, 2004 06:45 PM

Derelict and I are probably in ferocious agreement. But it is not the case that "Bush and Rummy still refuse to commit the needed manpower to get the job done." The manpower simply doesn't exist. The Army today is trying to activate 47-year old former helicopter pilots in the IRR who haven't touched helicopter controls in years. The troops in theater are the troops available. And if the priority of the chain of command is to take Fallujah, then the road between the airport and Baghdad will have to be left vulnerable.

Posted by: jam at November 21, 2004 06:45 PM

I'm quite surprised the NY Times/Frontline story about credit card interest rates and fees has been ignored in the blogs. Especially the economically-oriented blogs.

One thing that stands out is the new concept of "universal default", where a credit card issuer slams you with a punitive interest rate because of some totally unrelated blip on your credit report. Even if you've never been late paying them, ever, you can get hammered.

Interest rates are at unprecedented levels, and so are the profits of bank credit card operations (their most profitable business.)

Meanwhile, the banks are pushing for bankruptcy restrictions, even though they clearly aren't being hurt by today's bankruptcy rules.

Posted by: Jon H at November 21, 2004 06:57 PM

Why are we ruled by these morons? If we're honest, we have to admit that not all of these morons are Republicans. The Democratic leadership still seems to support this war, and played an important role in starting it. Slate reported last summer that the Dems were purging anti-war people from leadership positions, which makes Gen. Brent Scowcroft and Anthony Zinnni too far to the left for the Democratic party.

Everyone with any knowledge of the area -- including the State Dep't and CIA -- told us that this was a high-risk, low-reward strategy, and yet our representatives couldn't even bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting for war.

Posted by: Carl at November 21, 2004 07:25 PM

As Jon H. notes, the credit card companies are tightening up, and there is nothing to stop them. The good news for those companies is that the new congress will take up the bankruptcy code and install a new treatment for consumers, which will require those whose income is above the median in their home state will not be eligible for chapter 7, but will have to file a chapter 13: the lash behind the new interest rates.

Posted by: masaccio at November 21, 2004 07:39 PM

At last someone mentions the obvious -- we don't have enough soldiers any more. We're not a young nation these days, and soldiering is more cognitively demanding than it once was.

We can either employ huge numbers of mercenaries, or we can give up our neo-empire, or we can institute a draft.

The draft would mostly be a draft for services to support fighers, not for fighters. I'm sure they'll find something for middle-aged economists.

See also

http://jfaughnan.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_jfaughnan_archive.html#110105937332238789

Posted by: John Faughnan at November 21, 2004 07:47 PM

Carl: the morons (neoconservatives) are pretty much all Republicans. On the Democratic side, we have spineless geldings who won't say obviously true things if they could be politically unpopular, or could offend somebody. And saying "Hey! War Widows! Your husband died for nothing!" would certainly qualify. A coward is not the same thing as a moron, but it's not much better either.

Posted by: rps at November 21, 2004 08:16 PM

where's the A-team,or those guys from "Mission Impossible"? they would fix for sure.

Posted by: old ari at November 21, 2004 08:46 PM

The good doctor is correct in seething at the incompetent conduct of this war. Twenty months after the invasion began the U.S. still does not have sufficient troops are on the ground to fulfill the mission. If this charming little expeditionary effort is crucial to the peace and security of the United States, why are we not putting everything on the line? Why does this Administration not take its own war seriously?

Posted by: MTC at November 22, 2004 12:01 AM

MTC, that is certainly the question. I doubt if this administration even yet understands just what this war that they entered into so eagerly actually consists of. They apparently thought (and by they, I mean all those important pols with one foot in the AEI/PNAC cauldron) that winning the war on terror was simply a matter of seizing the first opportunity to attack openly. Ah, the innocence. If we could just turn it into a good, clean fight, you see, between the evil-doers and us good guys, then of course we would win. Because well, we HAVE to.

Seriously, I think this is clearly one of the largest problems with this administration and its take on intelligence, both the gathering and analysis of. They seem to think that intel is something that's just sort of out there, to be picked up, preserved, and then served with whatever fine dessert you feel like having today. And since they've included thought crimes in with actual planning, the gathering of intel has become simultaneously endless and impossible. So of course, intelligence becomes just another policy mouthpiece. It's so much easier to wage war when you just keep saying two legs bad, four legs good. And when the evidence doesn't stand on its own legs, let alone support your war, why send it to the knackers!

Posted by: aunt deb at November 22, 2004 02:38 AM

Oops. I wasn't asking a question in the final line of my first post -- I meant it's rather like the Queen in Alice -- Off with their heads!

Posted by: aunt deb at November 22, 2004 02:41 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/21cards-web.html?

Soaring Interest Compounds Credit Card Pain for Millions
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

When Ed Schwebel was whittling down his mound of credit card debt at an interest rate of 9.2 percent, the MBNA Corporation had a happy and profitable customer. But this summer, when MBNA suddenly doubled the rate on his account, Mr. Schwebel joined the growing ranks of irate cardholders stunned by lenders' harsh tactics.

Mr. Schwebel, 58, a semiretired software engineer in Gilbert, Ariz., was not pleased that his minimum monthly payment jumped from $502 in June to $895 in July. But what really made him angry, he said, was the sense that he was being punished despite having held up his end of the bargain with MBNA.

"I paid the bills the minute the envelope hit the desk," said Mr. Schwebel, who had accumulated $69,000 in debt over five years before the rate increase. "All of a sudden in July, they swapped it to 18 percent. No warning. No reason. It was like I was blindsided."

Mr. Schwebel had stumbled into the new era of consumer credit, in which thousands of Americans are paying millions of dollars each month in fees that they did not expect and that strike them as unreasonable. Invoking clauses tucked into the fine print of their contract agreements, lenders are doubling or tripling interest rates with little warning or explanation.

This year, credit card companies are changing the terms of their accounts at a historically high rate, said Michael Heller, an industry consultant.

As those practices spread, they are creating a rift between the lenders and some of their more lucrative customers, according to cardholders, current and former bank consultants and regulators who were interviewed for a joint report by The New York Times and "Frontline," the PBS documentary program.

People like Mr. Schwebel, who carry balances from month to month and pay finance charges regularly, feel they should be the favored customers of the credit card business, which is now the most lucrative segment of banking. They make up the profitable majority of the 144 million Americans who have general-purpose credit cards. To a degree, they subsidize the 40 percent of credit card customers who pay in full each month without incurring any fees or charges.

But increasingly, they say, what should be a warm embrace has turned into a painful squeeze as lenders employ new tactics to extract more and bigger penalties for even the slightest financial transgressions. In the last few years, lenders have more frequently raised customers' rates because of slip-ups elsewhere, like late payment of a phone or utility bill, or simply because they felt a customer had taken on too much debt.

The practice, called universal default, started after a rash of bankruptcy filings in the mid-to-late 1990's and has increasingly become standard in the industry. While MBNA declined to comment on any specific customer's account, its general counsel, Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, said in a statement that it was being prudent by raising rates when it had reason to think the risk of not being repaid had increased.

Edward L. Yingling, executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, said bankers must have the flexibility to change terms on short notice. The bankruptcy filings of the 90's - many by customers who had been paying their bills on time - caught banks off-guard, he said.

Lenders decided they needed to watch for signs of trouble elsewhere, like missed car payments, he said. In those cases, he added, there are only two logical responses: "We're not going to let you have this credit card loan anymore and we're going to say, 'Pay it off,' or we can say, 'You're now more risky; we're going to raise your rate.' "

Still, some critics say the severity of the punishment does not match the risk of default. The suddenness and perceived unfairness of the penalties have left many consumers feeling burned by lenders who relentlessly courted them with promises of low rates.

To some cardholders and consumer advocates, credit card companies are acting like modern-day loan sharks, strong-arming their customers to pay more - with no legal limit on how much they can charge.

In eight years, the major card companies have increased the fee charged to cardholders for being even an hour late with a payment to $39, from $10 or less.

Unleashing an Industry

Duncan MacDonald, who, as a lawyer for Citibank was involved in its successful case for deregulation of fees before the United States Supreme Court in 1996, now says he fears that he helped to unleash a monster.

Until that ruling, most banks still charged an annual fee of about $25 for the use of a card and a single fixed rate to all borrowers, usually around 18 percent. Applicants either qualified for the privilege of carrying a card or they did not.

"I certainly didn't imagine that someday we might've ended up creating a Frankenstein," said Mr. MacDonald, who predicted that the penalty fees could rise to $50 in another year. "I look at that and I say to myself, 'Is $50 a fair fee, plus a 25 percent interest rate and all these other fees that are thrown on, for folks who are probably not that risky? Is that fair?' "

Mr. MacDonald said federal bank regulators should investigate the fairness of universal default and some of the banks' harsh penalties. But regulators and lawmakers have been reluctant to crack down on a popular consumer product that fuels America's economic engine. Consumer spending pulled the country through the last economic downturn, powered largely by purchases financed with debt, to the tune of $2 trillion.

Few consumer products today are as cherished or reviled as credit cards. The typical household has eight cards with $7,500 on them. People like Mr. Schwebel are known as "revolvers" in the industry because they roll balances over from month to month, never paying in full.

Without the 85 million Americans who revolve, card issuers would be struggling to please their investors. But with them and the hefty finance charges they accrue from the moment cashiers swipe their cards, the industry is reaping record gains. Last year, card issuers made $2.5 billion a month in profit before taxes.

"I think it is generally understood that those that use the revolving part of the credit card are kind of the sweet spot," said Mr. Yingling of the bankers' association, who spoke on behalf of several of the biggest issuers, including Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase and MBNA, all of which declined to make executives available for interviews.

Posted by: anne at November 22, 2004 02:54 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/business/yourmoney/21insure.html

Next Up for Spitzer: Funny Numbers
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

ELIOT SPITZER, the New York attorney general, has already exposed insurance industry secrets like bid-rigging and hidden commissions. Now he is training his spotlight on an even murkier part of that universe: the buying and selling of insurance policies that artificially bolster companies' financial statements.

The policies in question are known as finite insurance or financial reinsurance. They are sold as ordinary insurance policies, which allow companies that buy them to receive favorable accounting treatment - smoothing out losses on their books, for example.

To critics, however, the policies are structured less like insurance and more like loans. At heart, they say, finite insurance is simply a form of financial engineering that masks the strength or weakness at the companies that buy them. As such, its use has probably had a much greater impact on investors and customers than other industry practices that Mr. Spitzer has singled out.

The deals offer an especially rich vein for investigators to mine, industry analysts say. And last week, Mr. Spitzer sent out a flurry of subpoenas to insurers - including Ace Ltd., the St. Paul Travelers Companies and Zurich Financial Services - about policies they may have sold to help customers eliminate or offset losses that would have hurt their financial results. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are also scrutinizing financial engineering products sold by insurers. All three companies said they were cooperating, but they declined to comment further.

By far the biggest customers for such policies are insurers themselves, so investigators will be looking at how these companies may have used these contracts to make their books look better. As regulators unravel these arrangements, industry analysts say, they are likely to discover a labyrinth of deals among insurance companies that are often routed through tax havens in Bermuda or the Caribbean.

Given the complexity and secrecy of such deals - they are often not disclosed on insurers' financial statements and require a good bit of detective work to find - cases related to them may not come to light for some time. But industry analysts who have uncovered some of the arrangements on their own in recent years say that their use is widespread.

No one knows for sure how large the market is for such policies. Robert Arvanitis, president of Risk Finance Advisors, a corporate finance advisory firm in Westport, Conn., that specializes in insurance, estimates that in any given year, $50 billion of all insurance premiums involve policies with some kind of finite element.

Posted by: anne at November 22, 2004 03:05 AM

http://www.bushlies.ws/2004/09/news_from_the_g.html

David Corn wrote this two months ago:

I ran into an acquaintance who is a former military officer. He is a rather knowledgeable chap about Iraq, who has been there several times since the invasion, and he has many contacts and friends within the highest ranks of the Pentagon. What do you think of the latest news from Iraq? I asked him. "We've lost," he said without pause. Lost? Yes, he said, adding, "but this is not just my view." He told me that the previous day he had been visiting with a pal who is a top commanding officer of the Special Forces. My friend told this commander that he had concluded the United States was a goner in Iraq. The reply: "I knew this was lost five months ago." Oh shit, my friend thought and waited for the explanation. The commander explained that back then he was driving the six-mile stretch that runs from the Green Zone in Baghdad (where the US diplomatic and military offices are headquartered) to the Baghdad airport. An IED went off and took out the car in front of him. "If we cannot secure the road to the airport, we cannot win this thing," the commander told my friend. After recounting this conversation to me, my friend said, "A bomb went off today on the road to the airport."

Posted by: KevinNYC at November 22, 2004 03:20 AM

Jam, your post on prioritites illustrates what a NY Times Op-ed writer called a "deeply uncontroversial fact." We dont' have enough troops.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/opinion/21danner.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors

Two days later, watching an American general declare that in Falluja our forces had "broken the back of the insurgency," I felt the sentences I'd struggled to recall suddenly take shape; I reached for Mr. Powell's memoir and found these bitter lines:

"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."

Those plain words about Vietnam stand out with refreshing immediacy today, in this age of the destruction of the fact, when incontrovertible but unwelcome information is dismissed as partisan argument. What might the Colin Powell who wrote those words, or the younger officer in Vietnam who envisaged his future as a man who could never "quietly acquiesce," have said about our present war? What might "many of his generation" - who are indeed the men now commanding in Iraq - have said, had they not themselves quietly acquiesced?

They might have said that it is a deeply uncontroversial fact that the United States has from the beginning had too few troops in Iraq: too few to secure the capital or effectively monitor the borders or even police the handful of miles of the Baghdad airport road; too few to secure the arms dumps that litter the country; and too few to mount an offensive in one city without leaving others vulnerable.

They might have said that it is a deeply uncontroversial fact that the insurgency is spreading: when I arrived in Iraq 13 months ago, the insurgents were mounting 17 attacks a day; last week there were 150 a day. If the old rule of thumb about counterinsurgency warfare holds true - that the guerrilla wins by not losing and the government loses by not winning - then America is losing the Iraq war.

Posted by: KeivnNYC at November 22, 2004 03:26 AM

http://www.cpod.ubc.ca/polls/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewItem&itemID=5108

Do you realize that 5 out of 6 Americans might think this war is part of God's plan?

Quite a disconnect from those on this (or any other blog).

Posted by: DabAGong at November 22, 2004 04:03 PM

The most interesting piece I've ever seen on China:

http://64.29.208.119/archive_comm_article.asp?category=Guest+Commentary&content_idx=38021

Posted by: jm at November 22, 2004 10:40 PM

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/f16a4694-3cb1-11d9-bb7b-00000e2511c8.html

Posted by: jm at November 23, 2004 06:50 AM

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