Okay, maybe both of us...my
words on 10/25 regarding the black hole of money that is Iraq:
...it stops hurting so much if you don't think about how many billions of our own taxpayer dollars wasted in war. Either the money is lining the pockets of criminals here at home, or is actually being rerouted to militias and terrorists abroad, against whom we are fighting; all the while, we can't afford to give health care coverage to our own children or ensure a quality education for all our own students.
And on 12/2:
...all this completely ignores the cancer of corruption that has eaten Iraq from the inside-out.
Bob Hebert's words today:Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.
“The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end,” said Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, “is the loss of life that is occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even President Bush put forward.”
But “right below that,” he said, is the need to stop squandering incredible amounts of money that could be put to better use — helping to “make people’s lives better” — here at home. That colossal and continuing waste, he said, “should cause anxiety in anyone who cares about the future of this country. I know it causes me anxiety.”
President Bush’s formal funding requests for Iraq have already exceeded $600 billion. In addition to that, the report offers estimates of the war’s “hidden costs” from its beginning to 2017: the long-term costs of treating the wounded and disabled; interest and other costs associated with borrowing to finance the war; the money needed to repair or replace military equipment; the increased costs of military recruitment and retention; and such difficult to gauge but very real costs as the loss of productivity from those who have been killed or wounded.
What matters more than the precision of these estimates (Republicans are not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the costs associated with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them enormous societal consequences.
The black hole of money that is Iraq:
