What they teach at Baghdad Business School

Our thousands of regular readers may notice that we have given up any commentary on Opinionjournal.com (James Taranto). Recently, the OJ guys have been characterised by the general descent into madness on the right prompted by Wesley Clark's entry into the Presidential race, plus their own distinctive grave-dancing, with Edward Said the predictable target of the latter today. In fact, they also return today for an encore jig on Rachel Corrie's grave (the activist crushed by an Israeli bulldozer a few months ago), and they were lined up at Anna Lindh's grave for a nice gloating two-step when she was assassinated. So it's basically just an unpleasant read most of the time. Today is at least relieved by some wide-eyed neocon naivete, with the following:

[via link to US Central Command story about a Baghdad training seminar]
More than 200 business professionals between the ages of 21 and 35 heard lectures on topics related to entrepreneurship...
Guest speakers from Kellogg, Brown and Root, [and] Bechtel...spoke about topics such as obtaining contracts from companies and investing in the stock market.

[and then, OJ asks]
Does this sound like a "quagmire" to you? The Bush administration really must do a better job of getting stories like this one out.

DUDES! Do you think that the role of "guest speakers" from Kellogg, Brown, and Root and Bechtel might have anything to do with why the White House isn't flogging this story more? Let's be clear which companies we are talking about. KBR is owned by Halliburton -- and as David Letterman said, remember that's spelled with 2 Ls when you [taxpayer] are making out the check. And Bechtel? These are the guys who were investment partners with the Bin Ladens before 9-11, and are now busy feeding at the no-bid trough in the war's aftermath. We wonder how the "guest speakers" kept a straight face as they taught eager Baghdad businesspersons how to obtain contracts from companies. We doubt they are as naive as their home front boosters.