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[Donaldsensing.com] One Hand Clapping » Blog Archive » I try, I really try . . .: The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq, is an insult to every soldier serving in combat, and should deeply offend any American with an ounce of appreciation for what they suffer and risk so that the rest of us can sleep more comfortably at night. Without them, we wouldn’t live in a country where people securely possess all their God-given rights, including the right to express insensitive, ill-considered and uninformed remarks.
[Antiwar.com] Antiwar.com Blog: One person who attended a meeting of Bush’s “war cabinet” on Monday commented on Bush’s reaction: “I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally ”” that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget. The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”
[Juancole.com] Informed Comment: Since the US Coalition Provisional Authority essentially stole $9 billion from Iraq to run itself and the country the first year, basically the $9 billion actually spent on reconstruction by the US was little more than a repayment of the money taken (quite illegally under the law of Occupation), and the actual US investment in Iraq is zero. While the American public is being taxed to pay a bill for Iraq mounting toward $1 trillion (and Americans are nowadays staring the tax man in the face), that appears to go mostly to finance continued search and destroy missions that are probably mostly failures as counter insurgency.
[Hughhewitt.townhall.com] Hugh Hewitt: "You've got Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories aflame, you've got Iraq still aflame, and you've got the Iran issue now unresolved," said Carlos Pascual, a senior State Department official until this year. "It has hurt the U.S. internationally because it has only reinforced in everyone's mind that the U.S. was not being strategic, it was not looking ahead to how to handle the whole panoply of issues in a way that's both realistic and effective....
[Dailywarnews.blogspot.com] Today in Iraq: The study also notes that Defense Department expenditures that were not directly appropriated for Iraq have grown by more than 5 percent since the war began. But a portion of that increase has been spent "on support for the war in Iraq, including significantly higher recruitment costs, such as nearly doubling the number of recruiters, paying recruitment bonuses of up to $40,000 for new enlistees and paying special bonuses and other benefits, up to $150,000 for current Special Forces troops that re-enlist." "Another cost to the government," the study says, "is the interest on the money that it has borrowed to finance the war." Among the things taken into account by the study are some of the difficult-to-quantify but very real costs inflicted by the war on the American economy and society, such as the effect of the war on oil prices, and the economic loss that results from the many thousands of Americans wounded and killed in the war.
Reflected tags on Technorati: Blog, Iraq Photos, Politics Election, Iraq Reviews
