Expenses We Cannot Afford

[acmavm]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/expenses_we_cannot_afford/

By Rep. José E. Serrano

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In the waning days of the Korean War, Dwight D. Eisenhower, America’s great warrior president, said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

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George Bush’s misguided war in Iraq has led to hundreds of American deaths and thousands of horrific injuries for our soldiers, not to mention the tremendous destruction visited upon Iraq and its people. The independent 9/11 Commission completely discredited the administration’s attempt to link Iraq with the 9/11 attacks, and we have yet to find the fabled weapons of mass destruction that posed such an imminent threat to our nation’s security. Our international credibility has been seriously damaged, and anti-American sentiment around the world is sky high. And the administration’s tendencies toward secrecy and arrogance helped lead to a horrific prisoner torture scandal that further shocked and angered the world.

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First and foremost is the formidable cost of the war. It is difficult to comprehend what all those zeros mean, but the sad reality is that they represent billions of dollars worth of lost opportunities for ordinary Americans. The $400 billion we are in the process of sinking into Iraq could have fundamentally transformed America—brought millions out of poverty, ended the deficit, improved our schools, trains and hospitals. With New York’s share of the cost alone, we could have hired 214,000 school teachers in our state, built 161,000 housing units for New York families or put 175,000 more cops onto our streets. With the money we’ve already sunk into Iraq, we could have provided medical insurance for every uninsured child in America for more than 12 years.

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We need to keep these costs in mind, because every bomb, every rebuilding contract, every warplane that goes up is paid for by all of us. And unlike the last Gulf War, when George Bush’s father was able to persuade the world to pay for nearly 90 percent of the costs of conflict, this time around we’re paying 90 percent, and this is a far more costly conflict. Already, adjusting for inflation, we’ve paid 26 times more for this war than the last.

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[Jim Warren]

1. Wow and wow

and wow.
For conservatives who have fiscal priorities I want to ask: WTF?

It seems nobody is questioning the COST OF THIS fdskjlgad;lfsa;lifdj;aorsejbv;al;mlksd