IRAQ $300,000,000,000.00-"to help finance the most disastrous foreign policy"

[rodeodance]

buyers remose?--hardly-we just keep dishing it out!


http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=574171


IRAQ
$300,000,000,000.00

We'd call it buyer's remorse, but "remorse" doesn't quite capture the stunning tragedy of the moment. Following yesterday's Senate approval of the latest war supplemental, American taxpayers will soon have paid three hundred billion dollars – that's $300,000,000,000.00 – to help finance the most disastrous foreign policy decision of our generation. You paid. Your co-workers paid. Elderly couples, struggling single parents, college kids, middle-class families – we all paid. Here's what you've got to show for it:

NO CREDIBLE "VICTORY STRATEGY": Defense Secretary Rumsfeld recently claimed that while the Bush administration has no exit strategy for Iraq, it does have a "victory strategy," the goal of which is "to help the Iraqi Forces develop the skills and the capacity to provide their own security." The sad truth: we don't have either. Though more than a year and a half has passed since Gen. John Abizaid first announced plans to build Iraq's security force, the Government Accountability Office reported last month that coalition leadership has still failed "to develop a system to assess the readiness of Iraqi military and police forces so they can identify weaknesses and provide them with effective support." What to make of President Bush's cheery declaration last week that Iraqi forces now outnumber their U.S. counterparts? It's simply not credible. The GAO states explicitly: "U.S. government agencies do not report reliable data on the extent to which Iraqi security forces are trained and equipped." Moreover, the high number of security forces frequently touted by senior White House officials "overstates the number actually serving," probably by "tens of thousands." As one training supervisor, Army Staff Sgt. Craig E. Patrick, admitted recently: "It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here. I mean, they can the American people, but they can't us. These guys are not ready."

MULTIPLE NEW THREATS TO GLOBAL SECURITY: The CIA's National Intelligence Council believes that "Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of 'professionalized' terrorists," providing "terrorists with 'a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills.'" And with Iraq's fragile constitutional process still endangered by ethnic tensions and deadly insurgents, new potential threats lie just around the bend: a much-feared ethnically-driven civil war, a Shiite theocracy allied with mullahs in Iran, or a fractured Kurdistan in the north destabilizing Kurdish regions in Turkey, Iran and Syria.

HIGHEST LEVEL OF TERROR ATTACKS IN TWO DECADES: Every year since 1985 the State Department has published its annual report on international terrorism, described as "the definitive report on the incidence of terrorism around the world." In compiling the latest report, "the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985." (Eager the see the findings for yourself? Don't hold your breath. The State Department decided to suppress the report.).......

[impeachthescoundrel]

1. You know what their forign policy is

Take.Over.The.World

[ladjf]

7. So far, 300billion bucks, 1500+ troops dead, 100,000 Iraqi dead

and we haven't even "taken over" Iraq, a country that basically was without a functional military. We're not quite ready for the world yet.

[realFedUp]

2. I really think Saddam would have taken $1 billion

and a timeshare in the Bahamas....

[okieinpain]

3. 300 billion and counting. that should be the headline. this shit is

no where near finished.

[progressiveBadger]

4. That's more than $2000 from every person who filed taxes

Based on 130M returns on the IRS website.

[ladjf]

8. I'd like to have my 2,000 back. How about you.

On the other hand, I would have been willing to pay 2,000 to keep us from going in the first place. But, no one asked me.

[progressiveBadger]

9. Yep, me too

There's probably one or two starving people in this country that could have used the extra cash.

[Career Prole]

5. Another milestone. Now watch it disappear when it becomes

politically costly.

We used to wonder whether "they'd" get mad like us when our death toll reached 100 (no), then 300 (no again), then 500 (nope), then 1000 (hmmm...was that a grumble I heard?). Shortly after that "magic thousand" milestone the media just stopped covering dead soldiers, almost as if...they'd been ordered to.

Will the one-half trillion dollar mark be where they decide to draw the line at reporting the monetary cost?

[ScooterTramp]

6. So, for all that money we bought a de-stabilized world.

New world order be damned!