If I don't die by Thursday, I'll be roaring Friday night.

There are a bunch of right-wingers in the media crowing about how it's payback time for the Europeans and how denying contracts to French, German, Russian and Canadian companies is the right thing to do -- as though the issue was dispensing justice to some European multi-nationals.

Well, I've got news for you, those companies don't need our contracts.

The issue isn't that this policy is moving backwards from what Bush said he was going to do - go to the international community for help in rebuilding Iraq, but that it's stupid. That's it, it's just plain STUPID, and should be abandoned. France, Germany, Russia and Canada are our allies (at least they were the last time I checked), and we need their help!

Some of those right-wingers think that this is clever bargaining. It's not. If we don't get their help, the US taxpayer is going to get stuck with paying almost the entire bill for the reconstruction. Then, in a few years, the Europeans will be there anyway bidding against US companies, and there won't be anything we can do about it!

Or you could think about it this way. The contracts are worth about $20 billion. If the French and the Germans both got a couple of contracts for a billion a piece, do you think that Germany or France is going to write off more than a hundred billion dollars in Iraqi loans? That's what Bush just sent Baker over there to ask them to do. What kind of reception do you think Baker is going to get in Moscow or Paris? Hah! And what about the anti-Iraq war publics in those countries? Do you think the German government is going to face its own people's rath just so one of its companies can make a couple of million dollars in profit?

Of course, not.

The people who are praising the decision to deny contracts to important allies just fail to appreciate the situation we're in.

In the words of Josh Marshall, "We're like the Saber-toothed Tiger sinking into the tar pit. And over on dry land are a few giraffes munching away on some leaves. And we're taunting them with what terms we're going to give them to buy into the good thing we've got going on."

It would be nice if the Bush administration stopped acting like a spoiled child and grew up.