Vista - MSFT Adjusting Slowly to Playing Google Game

December 9, 2006
New York Times
Biz Section Above Da Fold

Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
By SAUL HANSELL

There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such a
behemoth is slow going.

"I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar
in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask
Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run its
online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call down,
'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice. "Sometimes the
connections to the engine room aren't there."

The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's online
unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course. Over the
last year, its online properties have lost users in the United States. The
billions of dollars the company has spent building its own search engine
have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market, Microsoft's online
unit is losing money.

Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
Microsoft's turf.

Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored
with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and
failed to make a search engine people liked to use.

"A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the
consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins. It is
the best experience."

It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast, be
as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)

But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.

In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill Gates
as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to create
online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a platform
that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites using Microsoft's
powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising that will appear on
these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own software and video games,
as well as its own Web site. And it wants to use its online services to
freshen up its own software.

This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable if
musty MSN.

"There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
well as the online unit.

Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online, he
said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've got
Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those services."

Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most of
the advertising and search industry.

Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said neither
MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where Google has
become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft as the place
you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither is Windows Live."

Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.

"I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not decided
what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding whether to change
the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine itself more appealing
to consumers.

What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well known
and its various services have 430 million users around the world. He
promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
oversee and revive the MSN portal.

"I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them use
our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
leaking."

So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least
two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a conventional
portal with links to programming on various topics that competes with Yahoo
and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site, is meant to look much
like Google, a spare-looking page that can be customized with modules from
various services and news feeds.

Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the latest
upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course, the
competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
systems.

"Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
archrival Google moves much more quickly.

At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.

"We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research unit.
"If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one they
should be using, imagine the typical user."

Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping organizations,
employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's stock fell after it
disclosed a sharp increase in research spending, directions changed again.

"They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After the
stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."

Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.

"Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
"If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's headquarters
in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)

Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing rapidly.

Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
their users.

One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
computer makers have started changing the default settings on their browsers
to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the traffic) instead of
MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are promoting toolbars and other
software that help attract traffic.

Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but under
pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista will hardly
promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet Explorer, for
example, offers users a long list of search engines, with Windows Live
listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.

So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business, the
biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that people
will choose over Google and Yahoo.

Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a search
engine - in two years.

So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search experts.
Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks behind
Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has narrowed some.

"They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search engine,"
Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are still a
little behind."

And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, found
that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search engine
actually found what they were looking for faster when they used Google.

Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.

"Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."

This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at Ask
Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see a
preview of Web pages found by the search engine.

"You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
the last 10 percent."

lol
well
I use one "undead" service,
messenger- and that's it-no "Undead" search for me.
It's not "LIVE'; so it's gotta be UNDEAD
Windows "Undead" Messenger
ROFLMAO

Jeff

"Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> December 9, 2006
> New York Times
> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>
> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
> By SAUL HANSELL
>
> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such a
> behemoth is slow going.
>
> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar
> in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask
> Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run its
> online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call down,
> 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice. "Sometimes the
> connections to the engine room aren't there."
>
> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's online
> unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course. Over the
> last year, its online properties have lost users in the United States. The
> billions of dollars the company has spent building its own search engine
> have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market, Microsoft's
> online unit is losing money.
>
> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
> Microsoft's turf.
>
> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored
> with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and
> failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>
> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the
> consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins. It is
> the best experience."
>
> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast, be
> as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>
> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>
> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill Gates
> as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to create
> online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites using
> Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising that will
> appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own software and
> video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to use its online
> services to freshen up its own software.
>
> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable if
> musty MSN.
>
> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
> well as the online unit.
>
> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online, he
> said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've got
> Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
> services."
>
> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
> of the advertising and search industry.
>
> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said neither
> MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where Google
> has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft as the
> place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither is
> Windows Live."
>
> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>
> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding whether
> to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine itself
> more appealing to consumers.
>
> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world. He
> promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>
> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
> leaking."
>
> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least
> two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>
> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the latest
> upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course, the
> competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
> systems.
>
> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>
> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>
> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>
> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
> directions changed again.
>
> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After the
> stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>
> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>
> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>
> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
> rapidly.
>
> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
> their users.
>
> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the traffic)
> instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are promoting
> toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>
> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but under
> pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista will
> hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet Explorer,
> for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with Windows Live
> listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>
> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>
> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
> search engine - in two years.
>
> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has narrowed
> some.
>
> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
> still a little behind."
>
> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, found
> that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search engine
> actually found what they were looking for faster when they used Google.
>
> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>
> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>
> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see a
> preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>
> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
> the last 10 percent."
>
>
>
>

Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word
for word. Ever hear of copy rights?

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> December 9, 2006
> New York Times
> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>
> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
> By SAUL HANSELL
>
> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such a
> behemoth is slow going.
>
> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an oar
> in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the Ask
> Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run its
> online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call down,
> 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice. "Sometimes the
> connections to the engine room aren't there."
>
> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's online
> unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course. Over the
> last year, its online properties have lost users in the United States. The
> billions of dollars the company has spent building its own search engine
> have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market, Microsoft's
> online unit is losing money.
>
> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
> Microsoft's turf.
>
> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too enamored
> with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map service, and
> failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>
> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by the
> consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins. It is
> the best experience."
>
> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast, be
> as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>
> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>
> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill Gates
> as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to create
> online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites using
> Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising that will
> appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own software and
> video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to use its online
> services to freshen up its own software.
>
> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable if
> musty MSN.
>
> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
> well as the online unit.
>
> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online, he
> said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've got
> Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
> services."
>
> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
> of the advertising and search industry.
>
> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said neither
> MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where Google
> has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft as the
> place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither is
> Windows Live."
>
> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>
> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding whether
> to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine itself
> more appealing to consumers.
>
> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world. He
> promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>
> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
> leaking."
>
> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least
> two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>
> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the latest
> upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course, the
> competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
> systems.
>
> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>
> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>
> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>
> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
> directions changed again.
>
> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After the
> stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>
> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>
> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>
> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
> rapidly.
>
> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
> their users.
>
> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the traffic)
> instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are promoting
> toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>
> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but under
> pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista will
> hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet Explorer,
> for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with Windows Live
> listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>
> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>
> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
> search engine - in two years.
>
> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has narrowed
> some.
>
> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
> still a little behind."
>
> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm, found
> that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search engine
> actually found what they were looking for faster when they used Google.
>
> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>
> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>
> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see a
> preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>
> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
> the last 10 percent."
>
>
>
>

Jeff--

Duh edu is a great institution and I owe everything to it.

If you're the same Jeff that had a problem with the WMP icon but changed to
a new very 007esque, Jennifer Garneresque email address there I wasn't
paying attention to that awful icon until you got me focused on it, so I
decided I had to change it and did change it and then for some reason I have
no good explanation for WMP would not open. I went to the WMP folder and
tried every way to run the executable to open it, and no go. I rebooted and
then it opened again.

You know this undead stuff reminds me of all the airhead stuff I'm seeing on
TV by people like Wolf the Reindeerhead Blitzer lol in his Sitchiation
Room --on Comet and Cupid and Rudolph too with this "winning" and "not
winning" stuff in Iraq.

I'd like to force every talking head and news anchor to read Frank Rich's
column in this morning's New York Times every day for a month so the duh
oriented public gets it. Talk about ll undead.

We're not 'not winning' in Iraq --we have unwon or done lost our ass and a
lot of people tragically. The Iraq Study Group shows me that Yes, Virginia
the Swing Justice Sandy Day O'Conner was on the bench while she was terribly
delusional.

The Iraq Study group visited Iraq once. Only one member dared venture out of
the Green Zone--Chuck Robb. Bush was so afraid to go, that he had a meeting
in the Four Seasons at Aman. Brave stuff there.

This should be read non-stop on all TV stations US and abroad until it sinks
in. It beautifully captures what's going on. Talk about undead.



Sunday, December 10, 2006
New York Times

FRANK RICH: The Sunshine Boys Can't Save Iraq


IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the
high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.


The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming
Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, "The Way Forward,"
unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan to
stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating
sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on
opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning
television and building to a "Sunshine Boys" curtain call by James Baker and
Lee Hamilton on "Larry King Live."


The wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has
lately been recruited by Wal-Mart to put down the populist insurgency
threatening its bottom line. Edelman's vice chairman is Michael Deaver, the
imagineer extraordinaire of the Reagan presidency, and "The Way Forward" had
a nostalgic dash of that old Morning-in-America vibe. In The Washington
Post, David Broder gushingly quoted one member of the group, Alan Simpson,
musing that "immigration, Social Security and all those other things that
have been hung up for so long" might benefit from similar ex-officio
bipartisanship. Only in Washington could an unelected panel of retirees pass
for public-policy Viagra.


Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined
the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic
standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental
ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run
from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly
unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a
paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his
Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a
step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late
October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is
that we have lost in Iraq.


That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as
he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage
in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion
that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not
'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his
hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is
exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no
matter what the price in blood.


The Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of how
the country Mr. Bush called a "grave and gathering danger" in September 2002
has devolved into a "grave and deteriorating" catastrophe today is unsparing
and accurate. But everyone except the president knew this already, and that
patina of realism evaporates once the report moves from diagnosis to
prescription.


Its recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are
completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional
Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American
military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring
ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White
House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to "influence events"
for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank
in Vegas.


The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters,
equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse
to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just
one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands
more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason
to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all
those who came before have failed. As the report points out, the loyalties
and capabilities of the existing units are suspect as it is.


By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way
forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact
a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt
in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to the
cynical game can be found in a single sentence: "We agree with the goal of
U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: 'an Iraq that can govern
itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.' " This studious group knows that
even that modest goal, a radical devaluation of the administration's
ambition to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, has long been
proven a mirage. The Iraqi government's ability to defend anything is so
inoperative that the group's members visited the country but once, with just
one (Chuck Robb) daring to leave the Green Zone. The Bush-Maliki rendezvous
10 days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.

The only recommendations that might alter that reality, however
evanescently, come not from "The Way Forward" but from its critics on the
right who want significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables
whatsoever. But a Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three weeks
ago estimates that a true counterinsurgency campaign would "require several
hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed
Iraqi police," not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a short-term booster shot
by John McCain.


Since these troops don't exist and there is no public support in either
America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can't satisfy the hawks
even if he chooses to do so. Since he's also dead set against a prompt
withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be, no matter how many
"reviews" he conducts. He will stay the course, with various fake-outs along
the way to keep us from thinking we've "lost," until the whole mess is
deposited in the lap of the next president.


But as Chuck Hagel said last week, "The impending disaster in Iraq is
unwinding at a rate that we can't quite calibrate." It is yet another, even
more reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still
while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging out its
deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics
mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence
metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the day the group
finally put on its show. The antagonists in Iraq are not about to take a
recess while we celebrate Christmas. The mass exodus of Iraqis, some 100,000
per month, was labeled "the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world" by
Refugees International last week and might soon rival Darfur's.


THE Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968,
L.B.J. replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara, with
a practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war's violence boiled over
soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public opinion. Allies in
our coalition of the willing - Thailand, the Philippines, Australia - had
balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford commissioned a re-evaluation of
American policy that churned up such ideas as a troop pullback, increased
training of South Vietnamese forces and a warning to the South Vietnamese
government that American assistance would depend on its performance. In
March, a bipartisan group of wise men (from Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley)
was summoned to the White House, where it seconded the notion of
disengagement.


But there the stories of Vietnam and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike
the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan president,
unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He abruptly
announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing and
entertain the idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in
"Vietnam: A History," it was already too late, after some 20,000 casualties
and three years of all-out war, for an easy escape: "The frustrating talks
were to drag on for another five years. More Americans would be killed in
Vietnam than had died there previously. And the United States itself would
be torn apart by the worst internal upheavals in a century."

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now,
they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that
we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may
salvage, starting with Afghanistan.


The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service
to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and
promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will
be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our
age.

CH


"Jeff" <dontshred@duh.edu> wrote in message
news:OC%23pOPJHHHA.1064@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> lol
> well
> I use one "undead" service,
> messenger- and that's it-no "Undead" search for me.
> It's not "LIVE'; so it's gotta be UNDEAD
> Windows "Undead" Messenger
> ROFLMAO
>
> Jeff
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Richard Urban wrote:
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article,
> word for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>


The times is a rag magazine and harris is a fruitcake!

--
- Glen

LOL do you think I've heard of Copyright law? Whatcha think Urban.? You've
read my legal refs before. Yep. It's the law that has forced MSFT to pay
nearly a billion in setllements after they stole software from small
companies over the past ten years after their crack legal team litigated
it--the same clowns who are hemorrhaging stockholder money to the European
Union in fines for being arrogant and slow.


That's a very sarcastic and insulting question Richard. You knew the answer
before you asked it. We have had tons of articles reprinted in this
newsgroup. How about MSFT's web site?

How about material from tons of web sites? They're all copyrighted. I'm
not charging for the material and what I reprinted is available all over the
web. But this is the most important point vis a vis the onpont copywright
law you invoked: The NYTimes is on the web although Frank Rich is Time
Select.


1)He is reprinted on Saturday night and he submits his columns to other
sites for their posting. How about that he of the sarcastic questions who
knows the answer but not the particulars of this column. Gotcha there
didn't I Mr. Urban? His choice. He's the author and it's in his contract.
LOL

Here's so more in the continuing education course for Richard the Urban.
It's also on the web free posted by NYT:

And NYT could care less that Frank Rich has been reprinted. Psssst it's to
educate people like you so you know what's really happening that's important
in Iraq. I want you to get up off your butt and tell them to pull out now.
There are only 23% of troops there that are combat, and hundreds of
thousands of guns we gave the Iraqi army were immediately sold on the black
market and are killing Americans and other soldiers as well as 3500 Iraqis a
month.

I'd like to congratulate Louisana's new representative to Congress who has
become the first Congressman to be elected after the FBI obtained a search
warrant and found $90.000 in cold cash in his freezer. He has said for 6
moths he has a solid explanation--ice is solid--but hasn't offered it--I
think it's that he wanted to live the dream of "cold cash."

His indictment and trial during the spring will make for some fun reading as
he both makes the laws and defends himself from prison. But hey he's a
democratic vote in a democratically controlled House until they take him
away.

Despite a federal corruption investigation, Representative William J.
Jefferson was re-elected with a decisive runoff victory.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/index.html
____________________________
December 10, 2006
Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos
By C. J. CHIVERS
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec. 8 - The Kurdish security contractor placed the black
plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9-millimeter
pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi
Army and police.

This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi Army or police. It had
been stolen or sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that
does a lively black-market business in police and infantry arms. The
contractor bought it there.

He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault
rifle with a collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or
fire from a car. "I bought this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle.
"Now it costs $650. The prices keep going up."

The market for this American-issued pistol and the ubiquitous assault rifle
illustrated how fear, mismanagement and malfeasance are shaping the
small-arms market in Iraq.

Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more
buyers push prices several times higher than those that existed at the time
of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn,
have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption - the migration of
army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.

All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to
weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.

But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops
and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and
pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries.
These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by
the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was criticized
by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to
properly account for the arms.

The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street
markets here, where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of
grocery kiosks, cosmetics stores and rug shops, or from the trunks of cars.
Proprietors show samples for immediate purchase and offer to take orders -
10 guns can be had in two hours, they say, and 100 or more the next day.

"Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig.
Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the
Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the
smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."

The forces propelling the trade can be seen in the price fluctuations of the
country's most abundant firearm, the Kalashnikov.

In early 2003, a Kalashnikov in northern Iraq typically cost from $75 to
$150, depending on its condition, origin and style. Immediately after the
invasion, as fleeing soldiers abandoned their rifles and armories were
looted, prices fell, pushed down by a glut and a brief sense of optimism.

Today, the same weapons typically cost $210 to $650, according to interviews
with seven arms dealers, two senior Kurdish security officials and several
customers. In other areas of Iraq, prices have climbed as high as $800,
according to Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has been assembling data on
Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based
organization.

The price ranges reflect not only a weapon's condition but its model. A
Kalashnikov made in a former Soviet-bloc factory costs more than a
Kalashnikov made in China, North Korea or Iraq. Collapsible-stock models
have become disproportionately expensive. The price ranges do not include
the most compact Kalashnikovs, like those Osama bin Laden has been
photographed with, which now have a collector's value in Iraq and can cost
as much as $2,000.

In many ways, weapon prices provide a condensed history of Iraq's slide into
chaos.

Prices began moving upward in the summer of 2003 as several classes of
customers entered the market together, Iraqi security officials and the arms
dealers said. Western security contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite
paramilitary units and criminals who were released from prison by Saddam
Hussein before the war all sought the same weapons at once.

Kalashnikov prices quickly reached $200, they said. Since late last year,
prices have been moving up again, as sectarian war has spread. Militias have
been growing at the same time that more civilians have been seeking weapons
for self-defense - twin demand pressures that pushed prices to new heights
this fall.

"Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia
want the weapons because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan
Jalal, the chief of security in the Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."

Mr. Killicoat put it another way. "When households start entering the
market, that's a free-for-all," he said.

The surge is evident across a spectrum of arms. Pistol prices have nearly
tripled since 2003. Western 9-millimeter pistols now sell for $1,100 to
$1,800 in the bazaars of this city. Sniper rifles cost $1,100 to $2,000, the
dealers said. In the West, similar pistols sell for $400 to $600.

Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering
from state armories, including the widespread theft of weapons the United
States had issued to Iraq's police officers and soldiers.

"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you
can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his
kiosk and offered weapons in the back. "The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police -
they all sell them right away."

No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the
owner and a friend swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher and three Kalashnikovs from a car and another room.

The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped
two of the rifles out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside
and out, and appeared never to have been used. They had folding stocks and
were priced at $560 each.

The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost
all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are
our best suppliers."

One pistol was a new Walther P99, a 9-millimeter pistol that the dealer said
had been issued by the Americans to the Iraqi police. It was still in its
box.

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa,
showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900.
Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

When asked if he was surprised that the Iraqi police and soldiers sold their
own guns, he scoffed.

"Everything goes to the bazaar," he said.

He added: "It is not only pistols. A lot of police cars are being sold. The
smugglers brought us three cars and asked if we wanted to buy them. Their
doors were still blue, and police labels were on them. The lights were still
on top."

Although the scale of weapons sales is unmistakably large, it is impossible
to measure precisely. Sales are almost always hidden and unrecorded.

Tracing American-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is
especially difficult because the United States did not register serial
numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small arms purchased for Iraqi
security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction.

The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and
Reconstruction Fund. Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and
at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles that had not previously been
used, according to the report.

Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq, agreed that weapons provided by the United States
had slipped from custody.

"I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and
misappropriated," General Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector general
had estimated that 4 percent, or about 14,000 weapons, were lost between
arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi forces. Most of the weapons
were pistols.

The general said that he thought the estimate was high and that
accountability was improving. A weapons registry was being created, he said.
"Serial numbers are being registered," he said.

But the estimate of a 4 percent loss did not include weapons that were lost
or stolen after being issued to Iraqi units. The arms dealers said this was
the main source of their goods.

The arms dealers described several factors that kept weapons flowing from
state custody.

Some have been taken by insurgents in ambushes or raids. Defections and
resignations have also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they
said, and often departing soldiers and officers leave with their weapons,
which are worth more than several months of pay.

Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq
resembled African countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the
police selling off their guns. "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in
the household," he said.

"If anything happens to a police officer's family and he needs money, he
walks into work the next day and says, 'Hey, my gun got stolen.' "

Another weapons dealer, who Kurdish officials said had been providing them
with weapons since 1991, said the latest black-market sales followed an old
pattern precisely.

Throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, Iraqi Army officers were in the arms trade,
he said, selling weapons to smugglers. This was how the Kurdish guerrillas
kept themselves supplied.

Now, he said, the smugglers remain in business, and their trade is made
easier because the units often do not have inventories. "I am surprised
sometimes by the numbers," he said. "Sometimes they come by the hundreds."

James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.



"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word
> for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

LOL there you have it. And gclark is a linchpin of a helper on the MSFT
groups. And of course what a nutty bunch of ideas are expressed in these
articles. How rational to stay the course like gclark. Donate those guns to
the black market and blithly ignore the killing in Iraq of everyone's
children but yours.

Clark thinks this is a great idea and he's going to see a lot more of it:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/coffin_photos/dover/

Sunday, December 10, 2006
New York Times

FRANK RICH: The Sunshine Boys Can't Save Iraq


IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the
high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.


The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming
Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, "The Way Forward,"
unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan to
stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating
sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on
opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning
television and building to a "Sunshine Boys" curtain call by James Baker and
Lee Hamilton on "Larry King Live."


The wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has
lately been recruited by Wal-Mart to put down the populist insurgency
threatening its bottom line. Edelman's vice chairman is Michael Deaver, the
imagineer extraordinaire of the Reagan presidency, and "The Way Forward" had
a nostalgic dash of that old Morning-in-America vibe. In The Washington
Post, David Broder gushingly quoted one member of the group, Alan Simpson,
musing that "immigration, Social Security and all those other things that
have been hung up for so long" might benefit from similar ex-officio
bipartisanship. Only in Washington could an unelected panel of retirees pass
for public-policy Viagra.


Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined
the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic
standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental
ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run
from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly
unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a
paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his
Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a
step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late
October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is
that we have lost in Iraq.


That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as
he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage
in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion
that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not
'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his
hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is
exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no
matter what the price in blood.


The Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of how
the country Mr. Bush called a "grave and gathering danger" in September 2002
has devolved into a "grave and deteriorating" catastrophe today is unsparing
and accurate. But everyone except the president knew this already, and that
patina of realism evaporates once the report moves from diagnosis to
prescription.


Its recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are
completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional
Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American
military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring
ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White
House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to "influence events"
for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank
in Vegas.


The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters,
equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse
to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just
one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands
more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason
to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all
those who came before have failed. As the report points out, the loyalties
and capabilities of the existing units are suspect as it is.


By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way
forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact
a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt
in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to the
cynical game can be found in a single sentence: "We agree with the goal of
U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: 'an Iraq that can govern
itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.' " This studious group knows that
even that modest goal, a radical devaluation of the administration's
ambition to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, has long been
proven a mirage. The Iraqi government's ability to defend anything is so
inoperative that the group's members visited the country but once, with just
one (Chuck Robb) daring to leave the Green Zone. The Bush-Maliki rendezvous
10 days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.

The only recommendations that might alter that reality, however
evanescently, come not from "The Way Forward" but from its critics on the
right who want significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables
whatsoever. But a Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three weeks
ago estimates that a true counterinsurgency campaign would "require several
hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed
Iraqi police," not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a short-term booster shot
by John McCain.


Since these troops don't exist and there is no public support in either
America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can't satisfy the hawks
even if he chooses to do so. Since he's also dead set against a prompt
withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be, no matter how many
"reviews" he conducts. He will stay the course, with various fake-outs along
the way to keep us from thinking we've "lost," until the whole mess is
deposited in the lap of the next president.


But as Chuck Hagel said last week, "The impending disaster in Iraq is
unwinding at a rate that we can't quite calibrate." It is yet another, even
more reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still
while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging out its
deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics
mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence
metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the day the group
finally put on its show. The antagonists in Iraq are not about to take a
recess while we celebrate Christmas. The mass exodus of Iraqis, some 100,000
per month, was labeled "the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world" by
Refugees International last week and might soon rival Darfur's.


THE Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968,
L.B.J. replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara, with
a practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war's violence boiled over
soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public opinion. Allies in
our coalition of the willing - Thailand, the Philippines, Australia - had
balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford commissioned a re-evaluation of
American policy that churned up such ideas as a troop pullback, increased
training of South Vietnamese forces and a warning to the South Vietnamese
government that American assistance would depend on its performance. In
March, a bipartisan group of wise men (from Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley)
was summoned to the White House, where it seconded the notion of
disengagement.


But there the stories of Vietnam and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike
the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan president,
unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He abruptly
announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing and
entertain the idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in
"Vietnam: A History," it was already too late, after some 20,000 casualties
and three years of all-out war, for an easy escape: "The frustrating talks
were to drag on for another five years. More Americans would be killed in
Vietnam than had died there previously. And the United States itself would
be torn apart by the worst internal upheavals in a century."

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now,
they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that
we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may
salvage, starting with Afghanistan.


The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service
to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and
promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will
be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our
age.
_______________________

December 10, 2006
Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos
By C. J. CHIVERS
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec. 8 - The Kurdish security contractor placed the black
plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9-millimeter
pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi
Army and police.

This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi Army or police. It had
been stolen or sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that
does a lively black-market business in police and infantry arms. The
contractor bought it there.

He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault
rifle with a collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or
fire from a car. "I bought this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle.
"Now it costs $650. The prices keep going up."

The market for this American-issued pistol and the ubiquitous assault rifle
illustrated how fear, mismanagement and malfeasance are shaping the
small-arms market in Iraq.

Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more
buyers push prices several times higher than those that existed at the time
of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn,
have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption - the migration of
army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.

All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to
weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.

But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops
and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and
pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries.
These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by
the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was criticized
by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to
properly account for the arms.

The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street
markets here, where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of
grocery kiosks, cosmetics stores and rug shops, or from the trunks of cars.
Proprietors show samples for immediate purchase and offer to take orders -
10 guns can be had in two hours, they say, and 100 or more the next day.

"Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig.
Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the
Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the
smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."

The forces propelling the trade can be seen in the price fluctuations of the
country's most abundant firearm, the Kalashnikov.

In early 2003, a Kalashnikov in northern Iraq typically cost from $75 to
$150, depending on its condition, origin and style. Immediately after the
invasion, as fleeing soldiers abandoned their rifles and armories were
looted, prices fell, pushed down by a glut and a brief sense of optimism.

Today, the same weapons typically cost $210 to $650, according to interviews
with seven arms dealers, two senior Kurdish security officials and several
customers. In other areas of Iraq, prices have climbed as high as $800,
according to Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has been assembling data on
Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based
organization.

The price ranges reflect not only a weapon's condition but its model. A
Kalashnikov made in a former Soviet-bloc factory costs more than a
Kalashnikov made in China, North Korea or Iraq. Collapsible-stock models
have become disproportionately expensive. The price ranges do not include
the most compact Kalashnikovs, like those Osama bin Laden has been
photographed with, which now have a collector's value in Iraq and can cost
as much as $2,000.

In many ways, weapon prices provide a condensed history of Iraq's slide into
chaos.

Prices began moving upward in the summer of 2003 as several classes of
customers entered the market together, Iraqi security officials and the arms
dealers said. Western security contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite
paramilitary units and criminals who were released from prison by Saddam
Hussein before the war all sought the same weapons at once.

Kalashnikov prices quickly reached $200, they said. Since late last year,
prices have been moving up again, as sectarian war has spread. Militias have
been growing at the same time that more civilians have been seeking weapons
for self-defense - twin demand pressures that pushed prices to new heights
this fall.

"Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia
want the weapons because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan
Jalal, the chief of security in the Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."

Mr. Killicoat put it another way. "When households start entering the
market, that's a free-for-all," he said.

The surge is evident across a spectrum of arms. Pistol prices have nearly
tripled since 2003. Western 9-millimeter pistols now sell for $1,100 to
$1,800 in the bazaars of this city. Sniper rifles cost $1,100 to $2,000, the
dealers said. In the West, similar pistols sell for $400 to $600.

Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering
from state armories, including the widespread theft of weapons the United
States had issued to Iraq's police officers and soldiers.

"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you
can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his
kiosk and offered weapons in the back. "The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police -
they all sell them right away."

No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the
owner and a friend swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher and three Kalashnikovs from a car and another room.

The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped
two of the rifles out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside
and out, and appeared never to have been used. They had folding stocks and
were priced at $560 each.

The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost
all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are
our best suppliers."

One pistol was a new Walther P99, a 9-millimeter pistol that the dealer said
had been issued by the Americans to the Iraqi police. It was still in its
box.

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa,
showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900.
Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

When asked if he was surprised that the Iraqi police and soldiers sold their
own guns, he scoffed.

"Everything goes to the bazaar," he said.

He added: "It is not only pistols. A lot of police cars are being sold. The
smugglers brought us three cars and asked if we wanted to buy them. Their
doors were still blue, and police labels were on them. The lights were still
on top."

Although the scale of weapons sales is unmistakably large, it is impossible
to measure precisely. Sales are almost always hidden and unrecorded.

Tracing American-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is
especially difficult because the United States did not register serial
numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small arms purchased for Iraqi
security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction.

The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and
Reconstruction Fund. Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and
at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles that had not previously been
used, according to the report.

Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq, agreed that weapons provided by the United States
had slipped from custody.

"I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and
misappropriated," General Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector general
had estimated that 4 percent, or about 14,000 weapons, were lost between
arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi forces. Most of the weapons
were pistols.

The general said that he thought the estimate was high and that
accountability was improving. A weapons registry was being created, he said.
"Serial numbers are being registered," he said.

But the estimate of a 4 percent loss did not include weapons that were lost
or stolen after being issued to Iraqi units. The arms dealers said this was
the main source of their goods.

The arms dealers described several factors that kept weapons flowing from
state custody.

Some have been taken by insurgents in ambushes or raids. Defections and
resignations have also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they
said, and often departing soldiers and officers leave with their weapons,
which are worth more than several months of pay.

Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq
resembled African countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the
police selling off their guns. "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in
the household," he said.

"If anything happens to a police officer's family and he needs money, he
walks into work the next day and says, 'Hey, my gun got stolen.' "

Another weapons dealer, who Kurdish officials said had been providing them
with weapons since 1991, said the latest black-market sales followed an old
pattern precisely.

Throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, Iraqi Army officers were in the arms trade,
he said, selling weapons to smugglers. This was how the Kurdish guerrillas
kept themselves supplied.

Now, he said, the smugglers remain in business, and their trade is made
easier because the units often do not have inventories. "I am surprised
sometimes by the numbers," he said. "Sometimes they come by the hundreds."

James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.




CH





"gclark" <gclark@noneya.net> wrote in message
news:aeGdnWwq1a-2EOHYnZ2dnUVZ_h3inZ2d@forethought.net...
> Richard Urban wrote:
>> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article,
>> word for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>>
>
>
> The times is a rag magazine and harris is a fruitcake!
>
> --
> - Glen

<grin>

I see another one of Chad's posts has gone missing!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVETHIS@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23fIL3gKHHHA.420@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Does the New York Times know that you reprinted their entire article, word
> for word. Ever hear of copy rights?
>
> --
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> Quote from George Ankner:
> If you knew as much as you think you know,
> You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
>
>
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

Chad Harris wrote:
> LOL there you have it. And gclark is a linchpin of a helper on the MSFT
> groups. And of course what a nutty bunch of ideas are expressed in
> these articles. How rational to stay the course like gclark. Donate
> those guns to the black market and blithly ignore the killing in Iraq of
> everyone's children but yours.
>

My son is in Iraq *assface*.

Al Bore, is that you?



--
- Glen

I hope your son is safe. It is a wasted effort and they should get him out
as soon as possible and your calling names phases me not at all. I
understand children in adult bodies. We need better birth control in this
country. You should really appreciate these articles and so should your
son. Only 23% of the troops in Iraq are doing any fighting, although the
rest can walk into an IED or be shot by one of the thousands of black market
guns the US stupidly didn't put any controls on. The second guns are given
to any Iraq police are army by the stupid US, they hit the black market to
be used against US troops.

And when my time came, I went unlike the chickenhawk President, the five
deferment VP, and the talking heads on TV who won't go near Iraq nor have
anyone in their family anywhere near it.

If you drive an SUV then that's one reason your son is there. It's about
oil.

You should email these to your son. Enjoy. Mommy taught you how to call
people names. Very good going. What a studmuffin you is.

FRANK RICH: The Sunshine Boys Can't Save Iraq


IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the
high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.


The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming
Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, "The Way Forward,"
unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan to
stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating
sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on
opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning
television and building to a "Sunshine Boys" curtain call by James Baker and
Lee Hamilton on "Larry King Live."


The wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has
lately been recruited by Wal-Mart to put down the populist insurgency
threatening its bottom line. Edelman's vice chairman is Michael Deaver, the
imagineer extraordinaire of the Reagan presidency, and "The Way Forward" had
a nostalgic dash of that old Morning-in-America vibe. In The Washington
Post, David Broder gushingly quoted one member of the group, Alan Simpson,
musing that "immigration, Social Security and all those other things that
have been hung up for so long" might benefit from similar ex-officio
bipartisanship. Only in Washington could an unelected panel of retirees pass
for public-policy Viagra.


Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined
the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic
standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental
ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run
from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly
unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a
paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his
Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a
step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late
October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is
that we have lost in Iraq.


That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as
he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage
in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion
that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not
'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his
hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is
exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no
matter what the price in blood.


The Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of how
the country Mr. Bush called a "grave and gathering danger" in September 2002
has devolved into a "grave and deteriorating" catastrophe today is unsparing
and accurate. But everyone except the president knew this already, and that
patina of realism evaporates once the report moves from diagnosis to
prescription.


Its recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are
completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional
Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American
military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring
ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White
House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to "influence events"
for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank
in Vegas.


The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters,
equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse
to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just
one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands
more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason
to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all
those who came before have failed. As the report points out, the loyalties
and capabilities of the existing units are suspect as it is.


By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way
forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact
a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt
in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to the
cynical game can be found in a single sentence: "We agree with the goal of
U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: 'an Iraq that can govern
itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.' " This studious group knows that
even that modest goal, a radical devaluation of the administration's
ambition to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, has long been
proven a mirage. The Iraqi government's ability to defend anything is so
inoperative that the group's members visited the country but once, with just
one (Chuck Robb) daring to leave the Green Zone. The Bush-Maliki rendezvous
10 days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.

The only recommendations that might alter that reality, however
evanescently, come not from "The Way Forward" but from its critics on the
right who want significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables
whatsoever. But a Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three weeks
ago estimates that a true counterinsurgency campaign would "require several
hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed
Iraqi police," not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a short-term booster shot
by John McCain.


Since these troops don't exist and there is no public support in either
America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can't satisfy the hawks
even if he chooses to do so. Since he's also dead set against a prompt
withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be, no matter how many
"reviews" he conducts. He will stay the course, with various fake-outs along
the way to keep us from thinking we've "lost," until the whole mess is
deposited in the lap of the next president.


But as Chuck Hagel said last week, "The impending disaster in Iraq is
unwinding at a rate that we can't quite calibrate." It is yet another, even
more reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still
while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging out its
deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics
mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence
metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the day the group
finally put on its show. The antagonists in Iraq are not about to take a
recess while we celebrate Christmas. The mass exodus of Iraqis, some 100,000
per month, was labeled "the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world" by
Refugees International last week and might soon rival Darfur's.


THE Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968,
L.B.J. replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara, with
a practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war's violence boiled over
soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public opinion. Allies in
our coalition of the willing - Thailand, the Philippines, Australia - had
balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford commissioned a re-evaluation of
American policy that churned up such ideas as a troop pullback, increased
training of South Vietnamese forces and a warning to the South Vietnamese
government that American assistance would depend on its performance. In
March, a bipartisan group of wise men (from Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley)
was summoned to the White House, where it seconded the notion of
disengagement.


But there the stories of Vietnam and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike
the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan president,
unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He abruptly
announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing and
entertain the idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in
"Vietnam: A History," it was already too late, after some 20,000 casualties
and three years of all-out war, for an easy escape: "The frustrating talks
were to drag on for another five years. More Americans would be killed in
Vietnam than had died there previously. And the United States itself would
be torn apart by the worst internal upheavals in a century."

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now,
they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that
we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may
salvage, starting with Afghanistan.


The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service
to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and
promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will
be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our
age.
_______________________

December 10, 2006
Black-Market Weapon Prices Surge in Iraq Chaos
By C. J. CHIVERS
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Dec. 8 - The Kurdish security contractor placed the black
plastic box on the table. Inside was a new Glock 19, one of the 9-millimeter
pistols that the United States issued by the tens of thousands to the Iraqi
Army and police.

This pistol was no longer in the custody of the Iraqi Army or police. It had
been stolen or sold, and it found its way to an open-air grocery stand that
does a lively black-market business in police and infantry arms. The
contractor bought it there.

He displayed other purchases, including a short-barreled Kalashnikov assault
rifle with a collapsible stock that makes it easy to conceal under a coat or
fire from a car. "I bought this for $450 last year," he said of the rifle.
"Now it costs $650. The prices keep going up."

The market for this American-issued pistol and the ubiquitous assault rifle
illustrated how fear, mismanagement and malfeasance are shaping the
small-arms market in Iraq.

Weapon prices are soaring along with an expanding sectarian war, as more
buyers push prices several times higher than those that existed at the time
of the American-led invasion nearly four years ago. Rising prices, in turn,
have encouraged an insidious form of Iraqi corruption - the migration of
army and police weapons from Iraqi state armories to black-market sales.

All manner of infantry arms, from rocket-propelled grenade launchers to
weathered and dented Kalashnikovs, have circulated within Iraq for decades.

But three types of American-issued weapons are now readily visible in shops
and bazaars here as well: Glock and Walther 9-millimeter pistols, and
pristine, unused Kalashnikovs from post-Soviet Eastern European countries.
These are three of the principal types of the 370,000 weapons purchased by
the United States for Iraq's security forces, a program that was criticized
by a special inspector general this fall for, among other things, failing to
properly account for the arms.

The weapons are easy to find, resting among others in the semihidden street
markets here, where weapons are sold in tea houses, the back rooms of
grocery kiosks, cosmetics stores and rug shops, or from the trunks of cars.
Proprietors show samples for immediate purchase and offer to take orders -
10 guns can be had in two hours, they say, and 100 or more the next day.

"Every type of gun that the Americans give comes to the market," said Brig.
Hassan Nouri, chief of the political investigations bureau for the
Sulaimaniya district. "They go from the U.S. Army to the Iraqi Army to the
smugglers. I have captured many of these guns that the terrorists bought."

The forces propelling the trade can be seen in the price fluctuations of the
country's most abundant firearm, the Kalashnikov.

In early 2003, a Kalashnikov in northern Iraq typically cost from $75 to
$150, depending on its condition, origin and style. Immediately after the
invasion, as fleeing soldiers abandoned their rifles and armories were
looted, prices fell, pushed down by a glut and a brief sense of optimism.

Today, the same weapons typically cost $210 to $650, according to interviews
with seven arms dealers, two senior Kurdish security officials and several
customers. In other areas of Iraq, prices have climbed as high as $800,
according to Phillip Killicoat, a researcher who has been assembling data on
Kalashnikov prices worldwide for the Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based
organization.

The price ranges reflect not only a weapon's condition but its model. A
Kalashnikov made in a former Soviet-bloc factory costs more than a
Kalashnikov made in China, North Korea or Iraq. Collapsible-stock models
have become disproportionately expensive. The price ranges do not include
the most compact Kalashnikovs, like those Osama bin Laden has been
photographed with, which now have a collector's value in Iraq and can cost
as much as $2,000.

In many ways, weapon prices provide a condensed history of Iraq's slide into
chaos.

Prices began moving upward in the summer of 2003 as several classes of
customers entered the market together, Iraqi security officials and the arms
dealers said. Western security contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, Shiite
paramilitary units and criminals who were released from prison by Saddam
Hussein before the war all sought the same weapons at once.

Kalashnikov prices quickly reached $200, they said. Since late last year,
prices have been moving up again, as sectarian war has spread. Militias have
been growing at the same time that more civilians have been seeking weapons
for self-defense - twin demand pressures that pushed prices to new heights
this fall.

"Now the Sunni want the weapons because they fear the Shia, and the Shia
want the weapons because they fear the Sunni," said Brig. Sarkawt Hassan
Jalal, the chief of security in the Sulaimaniya district. "So prices go up."

Mr. Killicoat put it another way. "When households start entering the
market, that's a free-for-all," he said.

The surge is evident across a spectrum of arms. Pistol prices have nearly
tripled since 2003. Western 9-millimeter pistols now sell for $1,100 to
$1,800 in the bazaars of this city. Sniper rifles cost $1,100 to $2,000, the
dealers said. In the West, similar pistols sell for $400 to $600.

Arms dealers say that rising prices have led to more extensive pilfering
from state armories, including the widespread theft of weapons the United
States had issued to Iraq's police officers and soldiers.

"In the south, if the Americans give the Iraqis weapons, the next day you
can buy them here," said one dealer, who sold groceries in the front of his
kiosk and offered weapons in the back. "The Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police -
they all sell them right away."

No weapons were displayed when two visitors arrived. But when asked, the
owner and a friend swiftly retrieved six pistols, a rocket-propelled grenade
launcher and three Kalashnikovs from a car and another room.

The rifles and the grenade launcher were wrapped in rice sacks. He slipped
two of the rifles out of the cloth. They were spotless and unworn, inside
and out, and appeared never to have been used. They had folding stocks and
were priced at $560 each.

The dealer said they had recently been taken from an Iraqi armory. "Almost
all of the weapons come from the Iraqi police and army," he said. "They are
our best suppliers."

One pistol was a new Walther P99, a 9-millimeter pistol that the dealer said
had been issued by the Americans to the Iraqi police. It was still in its
box.

Glock pistols were also easy to find. One young Iraqi man, Rebwar Mustafa,
showed a Glock 19 he had bought at the bazaar in Kirkuk last year for $900.
Five of his friends have bought identical models, he said.

When asked if he was surprised that the Iraqi police and soldiers sold their
own guns, he scoffed.

"Everything goes to the bazaar," he said.

He added: "It is not only pistols. A lot of police cars are being sold. The
smugglers brought us three cars and asked if we wanted to buy them. Their
doors were still blue, and police labels were on them. The lights were still
on top."

Although the scale of weapons sales is unmistakably large, it is impossible
to measure precisely. Sales are almost always hidden and unrecorded.

Tracing American-issued weapons back to Iraqi units that sell them is
especially difficult because the United States did not register serial
numbers for almost all of the 370,000 small arms purchased for Iraqi
security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for
Iraq Reconstruction.

The weapons were paid for with $133 million from the Iraq Relief and
Reconstruction Fund. Among them were at least 138,000 new Glock pistols and
at least 165,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles that had not previously been
used, according to the report.

Lt. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command-Iraq, agreed that weapons provided by the United States
had slipped from custody.

"I certainly concede that there are weapons that have been lost, stolen and
misappropriated," General Dempsey said. He noted that the inspector general
had estimated that 4 percent, or about 14,000 weapons, were lost between
arriving in Iraq and being transferred to Iraqi forces. Most of the weapons
were pistols.

The general said that he thought the estimate was high and that
accountability was improving. A weapons registry was being created, he said.
"Serial numbers are being registered," he said.

But the estimate of a 4 percent loss did not include weapons that were lost
or stolen after being issued to Iraqi units. The arms dealers said this was
the main source of their goods.

The arms dealers described several factors that kept weapons flowing from
state custody.

Some have been taken by insurgents in ambushes or raids. Defections and
resignations have also been common in Iraqi police and army units, they
said, and often departing soldiers and officers leave with their weapons,
which are worth more than several months of pay.

Aaron Karp, a small-arms researcher at Old Dominion University, said Iraq
resembled African countries that had had extraordinary difficulties with the
police selling off their guns. "The gun becomes the most valuable thing in
the household," he said.

"If anything happens to a police officer's family and he needs money, he
walks into work the next day and says, 'Hey, my gun got stolen.' "

Another weapons dealer, who Kurdish officials said had been providing them
with weapons since 1991, said the latest black-market sales followed an old
pattern precisely.

Throughout Mr. Hussein's rule, Iraqi Army officers were in the arms trade,
he said, selling weapons to smugglers. This was how the Kurdish guerrillas
kept themselves supplied.

Now, he said, the smugglers remain in business, and their trade is made
easier because the units often do not have inventories. "I am surprised
sometimes by the numbers," he said. "Sometimes they come by the hundreds."

James Glanz contributed reporting from Baghdad.

CH






"gclark" <gclark@noneya.net> wrote in message
news:fuednVcRfqX3BOHYnZ2dnUVZ_tDinZ2d@forethought.net...
> Chad Harris wrote:
>> LOL there you have it. And gclark is a linchpin of a helper on the MSFT
>> groups. And of course what a nutty bunch of ideas are expressed in these
>> articles. How rational to stay the course like gclark. Donate those guns
>> to the black market and blithly ignore the killing in Iraq of everyone's
>> children but yours.
>>
>
> My son is in Iraq *assface*.
>
> Al Bore, is that you?
>
>
>
> --
> - Glen