Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned (depraved!)

[jeanmarc]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&ncid=514&e=5&u=/ap/20030728/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_market

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.

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Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before investors begin registering this week. "The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., said

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Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as "a market in the future of the Middle East," the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea (news - web sites) missile attack.


That graphic was apparently removed from the Web site hours after the news conference in which Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record) of North Dakota criticizing the market.


Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and "unbelievably stupid."


"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?" he said.





I'm speechless.