hmmm

There are a couple ways to look at this story.

First there's the tragic... a bunch of unaware french soldiers got killed for no reason here. I mean - we knew Berlusconi and the Italians were into paying people off for preferred outcomes - look at AC Milan. But getting people killed?

Still - i find it interesting. Iraq was a nightmare until we started paying insurgents a couple hundred bucks a month... Afghanistan is apparently a powderkeg unless you drop a couple thousand dollars... I wonder... cant we just give bin laden a rolex and tell him to piss off? Sure there's a line... apparently we draw it at $2m (ask Letterman)... and sure it's morally reprehensible - but so is the only realistic way of solving the problem (aka genocide).