...Iraq's second asset, what McPherson calls "an entrepreneurial spirit you can still feel," is a rarity -- a pleasant postwar surprise. It exists partly because of an unpleasant aspect of prewar Iraq -- pandemic corruption. That was a hard school, always in session, teaching participants how to operate in the interstices of rules and in the shadowy conditions of the black market. McPherson notes that unlike the Soviet Union, Hussein's Iraq never nationalized retailing, which was a whetstone that kept commercial skills sharp.

Oil will eventually lubricate Iraq's financial revival. At least it will unless it provokes shortsighted American parsimony that could have costly political as well as economic consequences...

...It would be fun to forgive the debts contracted by a regime that ruled against the interests of the Iraqi people, money owed to nations that opposed the liberation of those people who are saddled with the debt. Fun, but improvident: Chaos in international finance would result from making the validity of nations' debts contingent on the virtues, or continuity, of nations' regimes.

Besides, McPherson says he has spoken with many Iraqis, and "they do not say we came to steal their oil. But if we load them with debt payable by oil revenues . . ." Enough said.