High cost of war in Iraq

For some time I have been vocal in expressing my feelings that there was no justification for the war in Iraq (no WMD, no nuclear weapons and no connection to bin Laden and his group of terrorists). I pray we end this war soon and bring our brave servicepeople home.

To reinforce my position I read a headline in a daily newspaper that stated "Casualty of the War: U. S. Economy." This unnecessary war has cost our taxpayers $314 billion over our regular budgets and, according to latest estimates, the cost of war in Iraq could exceed $600 billion.

"All this money going to Iraq is throwing U.S. fiscal responsibilities out of balance" said Senator Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican. He went on to say "The White House is completely disconnected from reality."

A former counter-terrorism official at the CIA said it best: "Osama bin Laden doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death."

Critics say the war is not making us any safer; it is harming us with an enormous tax burden to be paid for by our children and granchildren.

Let us not forget this money has been diverted to the military (which made some rich fat cats even richer) and as a result many programs such as heath, schools, public housing, AIDS, world hunger and a whole raft of others have been underfunded to our detriment and humanity's loss.

How about the Patriot Act, a monstrous piece of legislation that is infringing on our rights under the guise it are making us safer. Hogwash!

The Heritage Foundation, not a liberal think tank, put it this way:

"The war's costs will continue to rise and the rising death toll will make it harder to recruit any new soldiers."

With all the money thrown at this war it has done little to curb the insurgency.

It seems the longer we stay in Iraq the more terrorists come out of the woodwork to kill people.

"The spectre of terrorists spreading their bloody trail of human destruction wherever they choose" should make us reassess whether we are safe or not and "should offer another grim measure of a war against an adversary that is patient and cold-blooded."

We should not overlook the deaths of 1782 servicepeople and the 13,189 who have been wounded.

It is my opinion, echoed by many others including our Senators and Representatives, that the cost of this war has grown too high.

After the first euphoria over the President's well-staged announcement from the flight deck of a carrier that "The War Is Over!" we are more entangled in this morass than ever with no end in sight.

Since that announcement there have been 1643 military deaths 12,222 wounded.

We may have won the war but we sure haven't won the peace.

We have been unable to rein in the terrorists and we are no safer now than we were before we toppled Saddam Hussein.

Dick Cheney says the insurgency is "in its last throes." Rumsfeld says "anyone who says we have lost or are losing is flat wrong." General Casey says "there is a long way to go... things in Iraq are hard."

General Abizaid said: "the overall strength of the insurgency was about the same as it was six months ago."

This reinforces one of our major problems with this Administration - we can't get a straight answer! All we get is "spin."

One final note: Between 22,000 and 25,000 Iraqi ciivilians have been killed. I know, we didn't kill them all, but they died on our watch.



Norm Rosenberg is an Incline Village resident