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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex MG who wrote (247979)	3/24/2014 12:23:29 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542495

re..Crime of The Century (Repeat....................) When the US invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration estimated that it would cost $50-60bn to overthrow Saddam Hussein and establish a functioning government. This estimate was catastrophically wrong: the war in Iraq has cost $823.2bn between 2003 and 2011. Some estimates suggesting that it may eventually cost as much as $3.7tn when factoring in the long-term costs of caring for the wounded and the families of those killed. The most striking fact about the cost of the war in Iraq has been the extent to which it has been kept "off the books" of the government's ledgers and hidden from the American people. This was done by design. A fundamental assumption of the Bush administration's approach to the war was that it was only politically sustainable if it was portrayed as near-costless to the American public and to key constituencies in Washington. The dirty little secret of the Iraq war – one that both Bush and the war hawks in the Democratic party knew, but would never admit – was that the American people would only support a war to get rid of Saddam Hussein if they could be assured that they would pay almost nothing for it. The most obvious way in which the true cost of this war was kept hidden was with the use of supplemental appropriations to fund the occupation. By one estimate, 70% of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008 were funded with supplemental or emergency appropriations approved outside the Pentagon's annual budget. These appropriations allowed the Bush administration to shield the Pentagon's budget from the cuts otherwise needed to finance the war, to keep the Pentagon's pet programs intact and to escape the scrutiny that Congress gives to its normal annual regular appropriations. With the Iraq war treated as an "off the books" expense, the Pentagon was allowed to keep spending on high-end military equipment and cutting-edge technology. In fiscal terms, it was as if the messy wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were never happening. More fundamentally, the Bush administration masked the cost of the war with deficit spending to ensure that the American people would not face up to its costs while President Bush was in office. Despite their recent discovery of outrage over the national debt, the Republicans followed the advice of Vice-President Dick Cheney that "deficits don't matter" and spent freely on domestic programs throughout the Bush years. The Bush administration encouraged the American people to keep spending and "enjoy life", while the government paid for the occupation of Iraq on a credit card they hoped never to have to repay. Most Americans were not asked to make any sacrifice for the Iraq war, while its real costs were confined to the 1% of the population who fought and died there. As a result, the average American was never forced to confront whether pouring money borrowed from China into the corrupt Iraqi security services was worth it, or whether it made more sense to rebuild infrastructure in Diyala, rather than, say, Philadelphia.

To: Alex MG who wrote (247979)	3/24/2014 1:32:18 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 542495

If you really think that in a country with over 300 million, the majority can be duped - then democracy is obviously a failure. You do understand that is what you are saying don't you? I don't think democracy is a failure and I think the people know EXACTLY what they are voting for - or against. I sure do. I'll make this as clear as I can Alex. I don't want a single person in America to go to bed hungry. I am preparred to pay a significant amount of my money to do that - but it can't be wasted and it has to be fair and it has to be healthy for the kids. ...........When I stand in line at a grocery store with a chunk of chuck steak that I have to slow cook for hours to make it chewable and the fat woman in front of me is buying a rib steak at a ridiculous price and pays for that with food stamps (okay, not stamps anymore) and then buys a half rack of beer and a pack of cigarettes with cash - then there is something wrong. I'm going to repeat this in another way so maybe you can get my point; when the working family puts two wage earners into the work force both working hard jobs and then gets taxed on those wages and that tax money is then used to provided for money to provide food stamps so the people who sitting at home eat BETTER - or rather more expensive food - then I say we have to look for another way. You think I should feel fine about buying rib steak and cheetos and sugary soft drinks for the poor while I, who works hard for my money, clips coupons and buys stuff on sale should never buy a bottle of bottled water - but I don't. It is redistribution - not a safety net - and it is redistribution from the working man to the poor. And if given any kind of choice, I'm not going to vote for more of it! I know, you want the rich to pay - but they don't and we just don't seem to be able to find a way to do that - so the middle class working person pays, and pays, and pays. And then even that isn't enough so we borrow money from China and pay China interest on that money that our children and their children will be paying for. It is morally bankrupt! This is just one example Allex, but I use it to make my point. And there are many that apply to the rich and I am equally pissed about those. But there are no republicans posting here, so any effort to critisize them is whistling in the wind.