Politics: How Gross Can You Get?

What the hell kind of sick sons of b*tches does it take to come up with this plan?

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.
[...]
The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis Market, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." It said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.

The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts — essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holder of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.

A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.

Is there any chance that whatever piece of garbage at the Pentagon who came up with this idea shouldn't maybe be working on a plan to keep our GODDAMN SOLDIERS FROM GETTING THEIR ASSES BLOWN OFF BY ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADES EVERY DAMN DAY?!?!