Winning the Lottery

This isn't satire:

LOUISVILLE, KY. - In July 2003, Amanda Young said goodbye to her father as he left for Iraq to work for a contractor and help the family out of debt. Now Charles Craig Young is heading home, since the family won $100,000 Wednesday night playing Powerball...

Her father supervises maintenance crews in the heavily fortified Green Zone of Baghdad for Iraqi dignitaries. He works for private contractor KBR, Houston-based Halliburton's engineering and construction subsidiary. He was originally due back in August, but stayed to make extra money.

"They were kind of undecided when he was going to come home," Amanda Young said. "We kind of solved that problem."

Not all the money will go toward debt, Judy Young said. Her husband has one request when he gets back to Kentucky - he wants a new tractor.

First, congratulations are in order for Mr. Young and his family. He gets to come home from what is doubtless a dangerous situation. No westerners are safe in Iraq these days. Here's hoping his return is uneventful. However, the fact that he had to put his life on the line--in Iraq--to pay off debts speaks volumes. While billions are being thrown down the memory hole in Iraq, normal people are straining to pay bills. A few, for whatever reason, are gambling with their lives in exchange for, yes, quite a bit of money to be made there--but, as we saw today, at horrific risk.

Between this and the jobs report--which showed what can only charitably be described as anemic growth--we see that Bush has managed to screw up both his foreign and domestic policy.