IT IS IRONIC THAT FOR THE TIME BEING we will continue to pay folks to do nothing. However, I am glad to see they took my suggestion on the garbage situation. Read about it here.

It was payday on Saturday at Iraq's state-owned irrigation company. But there was not a hint of work in sight.

"Nobody has asked us to do anything in weeks," said Mahmoud Hameed, a geologist who had come only to pick up his pay. "We are all just waiting to see when the real work begins."

Two months after U.S. forces seized control of Iraq, U.S. officials now find themselves approving salaries for hundreds of thousands of no-show and no-work jobs.