All through the '80s and '90s, professorial mountebanks like James Q. Wilson, John DiIulio and Charles Murray grew sleek from best sellers about the criminal, probably innate, propensities of the "underclass," about the pathology of poverty, the teen predators, the collapse of morals, the irresponsibility of teen moms.

Now, there was indeed a vast criminal class coming to full vicious potential in the 1990s: a group utterly vacant of the most elementary instincts of social propriety, devoid of moral fiber, selfish to an almost unfathomable degree. The class comes in the form of our corporate elite.

Given a green light in the late 1970s by the deregulatory binge urged by corporate-funded think tanks and launched legislatively by Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, by the 1990s, America's corporate leadership had evolved a simple strategy for criminal self-enrichment.

BAGHDAD -- When Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz described the box that Washington has meticulously constructed for Iraq, he put it this way: "Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't."

It would be difficult to argue the point with Aziz, and I didn't try. Instead, during a Sept. 14 meeting here in Baghdad, I joined with others in a small American delegation who argued that the ominous dynamics of recent weeks might be reversible if -- as a first step -- Iraq agreed to allow unrestricted inspections.

Despite Iraq's breakthrough decision that came two days later to do just that, I'll be leaving Baghdad tonight with a scarcely mitigated sense of gloom. While the news from the Iraqi capital has been positive in recent days, the profuse signs of renewed acquiescence to war among top Democrats on Capitol Hill are all the more repulsive.

Boxed in, the Iraqi government opted to accept arms inspectors as its least bad choice. Gauging the odds of averting war, Iraq chose a long shot -- appreciably better than no chance at all, but bringing its own risks. Several years ago, Washington used UNSCOM inspectors for

Who doomed the presidency of George Bush Sr, and sent him limping back to Houston at the end of his first term? No, it wasn't Saddam Hussein, spared by Bush I in recognition of his long-term utility to the oil industry, on whom Bush Jr, now hopes to inflict revenge.

It was Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve and the man whose wrong-way calls on interest rates at the start of the Nineties ushered in the recession that allowed Bill Clinton to capture the White House on a platform of economic populism.

Guess what? It's happening again! Bush Jr, will learn that you can indeed step in the same river twice, so long as Greenspan is controlling the sluices. Because Greenspan did nothing in the late Nineties to curb the greatest corporate crime spree in the history of capitalism, the Democrats got out of Dodge seconds before the roof finally fell in.

As one economist recently remarked, in terms of economic reality, the late Nineties never happened. Everything was done with smoke, mirrors and crooked accountancy, condoned by Greenspan.

If you call the toll-free number on the TV screen during one of those upbeat Army commercials, a large envelope will arrive with a white t-shirt inside. On the back is a slogan in big block letters: "AN ARMY OF ONE."

The only other thing in the package is a videotape called "212 Ways to Be a Soldier." A hard-driving rock soundtrack propels all 20 minutes. Graphics flash with a cutting-edge look (supplied by a designer who gained ad-biz acclaim for working on a smash Nike commercial). Young adults provide warm narratives about their daily lives in the Army. From the outset, the mood is reassuring.

Sometimes, the screen fills with helicopters, intrepid soldiers rappelling through the air, men advancing across terrain as they carry machine guns -- always accompanied by plenty of rock 'n' roll -- all in the service of a country much more comfortable dishing out extreme violence than experiencing it. There's no talk of risk, and scarcely a mention of killing.

Carefully multiracial and coed, the video gets a lot of its juice from an undertone of foreclosed civilian possibilities. It beckons the

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes you have to connect the dots, and sometimes the connections just hit you over the head.

Congress is on the verge of taking a final vote on the bankruptcy bill, the product of a five-year effort by credit-card companies to stack the law in their favor and against average citizens. But you will be relieved to learn that our lawmakers have thoughtfully included a loophole that leaves six states, including Florida and Texas, free to continue providing extraordinary advantages to rich citizens from all over the country who need to shelter their gelt from bankruptcy proceedings. The millionaire protection amendment.

And this is about to happen despite the fact that one of the bill's most important sponsors, a congressman with financial problems, got a $447,500 loan -- as The New York Times genteelly put it, "on what appeared to be highly favorable terms," from (guess who? Right again) -- a major credit card company.