Thanks, this is reasonable. Sometimes people respond in ways that make it clear they are pushing someone's agenda or conspiracy theorizing.

Yes, the problem with power is that even in many democracies it seems too easily convertible to money and attracts greedy people.

I suspect such greed is a psychological pathology, but in addition to treating it the system could somehow make power inconvenient and unprofitable to attract "irrational" people who are crazy in the right way to want to actually make things better rather than turn a profit. This does probably sound quite un-American and I don't know how it could be implemented.

I am somewhat hazy on the politics of the Iraq war but I'll look it up.