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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (688007)	6/28/2005 3:31:16 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

All things are subject to cost/benefit analysis. Totally aside from the dead and wounded, potential long-term changes in world support for US (positive or negative), strategic gains or losses, etc., just look for one moment at the raw expense (nearly all deficit-funded... so interest costs will be added over many years to these initial numbers): At this point-in-time, we are already locked into rounding the corner on spending 1/2 Trillion dollars (combined cost of Iraq & Afghanistan running near $200 B. / yr.) That (some of it yet to be allocated) is money already spent or about to be spent. So, the question becomes: will we become locked-in to spending a second 1/2 Trillion dollars? (If, indeed, significant US military opoerations are fated to continue in Iraq --- trying to hold off for a while a perhaps inevitable Sunni/Shia civil war --- for as long as '12 years' as Rummie recently suggested... then I would have to believe that the second 1/2 Trillion was also becoming 'locked-in', likely far more then 1 Trillion would be the ultimate expense.) Considering that nearly ALL of that is BORROWED MONEY, adding directly to our national debt... and helping little or none at preparing the US for the rapidly emerging economic challenges of competing with China, India, et al. One has to ask: would that second 1/2 Trillion in borrowing be PRUDENT or COST-EFFECTIVE. At the present time, our accumulated national debt may be likened to a 'BIRTH TAX' on every newborn American's head --- divided up, it's currently about $150,000 per newborn. ...There ARE limits.