WORTH ANY PRICE?

The cost of staying on in Iraq is $12-$15
billion per month, depending on whose
figures you believe. The total tab is now
over $2 trillion, and heading for the stra-
tosphere. A nobel prize-winning economist
recently testified to congress that when the
ongoing costs for care of our disabled
veterans from Iraq are factored in, the
long term total cost of the conflict will top
$3 trillion! Think what this kind of money
could have done in fixing our crumbling
infrastructure, providing jobs, insuring
the uninsured, funding social security for the
next 50 years, and so on and on. And
remember, we are borrowing all this moola
from the Arabs and the Chinese on our kids'
credit cards! Whom the gods destroy, they
first make mad (crazy).

Christopher Hitchens argues in the Washington
Post (3/11/08) that cost is irrelevant where Iraq
is concerned, because the war couldn't have been
avoided: we had no choice but to remove
Saddam, he says. In typical Hitchens style, he
adds that to believe otherwise is both ignorant
and frivolous.

In other words, the Germans knew nothing, the
French new nothing, the 60% of the Brits, incl.
British Intel, who opposed the war knew zip,
King Abdullah next door in Jordan who warned
of a blood bath was ignorant, and so on. Several
of them warned of reviving the ancient blood
feud between Sunnis and Shia, but what did they
know? Mubarak in Egypt said it would create
1,000 Osamas. Musharraf in Pakistan said it
would open Pandora's box, and once started,
couldn't be stopped. Several also quoted the old
proverb about not removing the king unless you
know who or what will replace him: it could be
worse!

But all of these people were uninformed idiots.
(Hitchens' way of speaking, not mine.) Only he
and the handful of Bush people who thought
like him knew anything. It turns out that what
they knew wasn't true. It was all hogwash from
start to finish. They had believed their own spin
and were caught up in their own delusions and
illusions. Nothing they predicted happened,
and everything their opponents predicted came
to pass, and then some! This is the dumbest
thing our nation has ever done, and it keeps on
getting dumber. If it goes on for another 20
years and kills all the Iraqis and totally bank-
rupts us at a cost of trillions and trillions,
will it still be worth it, Chris? Have a nice day!

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net