{"id":294,"date":"2003-12-10T12:52:04","date_gmt":"2003-12-10T17:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/12\/winning_hearts_and_minds\/"},"modified":"2003-12-10T12:52:04","modified_gmt":"2003-12-10T17:52:04","slug":"winning_hearts_and_minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/12\/winning_hearts_and_minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning Hearts and Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"\">Funny<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>he Pentagon\ufffds decision to formally bar companies from countries opposed to the Iraq war from bidding on 26 reconstruction contracts drew sharp criticism from some of those nations on Wednesday.<br \/>\nTHE RULING BARS companies from U.S. allies such as France, Germany and Canada from bidding on those contracts &#8211; worth $18.6 billion &#8211; because their governments opposed the American-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein\ufffds regime.<br \/>\n. . .<br \/>\nThe directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, dated Friday and posted on a Pentagon web site Tuesday, limits bidders to firms from the United States, Iraq, their coalition partners and other countries which have sent troops to Iraq. It says restricting contract bids \ufffdis necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States.\ufffd<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Translation: we have to bribe other countries to go along with us.<br \/>\nThis should make Iraqi reconstruction financing and debt forgiveness all the easier to sell in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/12\/winning_hearts_and_minds\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Winning Hearts and Minds\"><p>Funny: he Pentagon\ufffds decision to formally bar companies from countries opposed to the Iraq war from bidding on 26 reconstruction contracts drew sharp criticism from some of those nations on Wednesday. THE RULING BARS companies from U.S. allies such as France, Germany and Canada from bidding on those contracts &#8211; worth $18.6 billion &#8211; because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}