{"id":1986,"date":"2004-05-21T16:48:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-21T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles-wp\/?p=1986"},"modified":"2004-05-21T16:48:00","modified_gmt":"2004-05-21T20:48:00","slug":"best-of-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/2004\/05\/21\/16\/48\/best-of-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/headlines04\/0521-12.htm\">Arms dealer Viktor Bout was the merchant of death wanted for feeding conflicts in Africa &#8211; until Iraq happened. Today the United States and Britain are using his extensive mercenary services in Iraq. The condemnation of his role in the diamond wars and other conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa over the past ten years is being silently erased &#8230; The UN Security Council drafted a resolution in March to freeze the assets of mercenaries and weapons dealers who backed ousted Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Bout should top that list, French diplomatic sources say. But the diplomats and UN sources say the United States has been working to keep Bout off that list. U.S. officials have indicated unofficially that the reason is that Bout is useful in Iraq.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?num=100&#038;hl=en&#038;lr=lang_en&#038;ie=UTF-8&#038;safe=off&#038;c2coff=1&#038;q=%22Viktor+Bout%22\">More about Viktor Bout<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arms dealer Viktor Bout was the merchant of death wanted for feeding conflicts in Africa &#8211; until Iraq happened. Today the United States and Britain are using his extensive mercenary services in Iraq. The&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meehawl.com\/Blogfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}