When this war started, we were supposedly there to find and destroy the 'weapons of mass destruction' that Saddam Hussein might give to Al Qaeda. We were told that he had connections with Al Qaeda. Both of these remarks were not only wrong. They were lies that went against the administration's own intelligence estimates.
The administration tried to tell us that the war would cost $50-60 billion dollars in total. When their own economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay dared to tell us that the true cost would be between $100 billion and $200 billion, he was fired. The cost of the war is now up to over $500 billion dollars, and counting. Watch the money tick off above in the left-hand column. It's horrible.
Dan Froomkin has an article entitled "Bush's Triumphalist Amnesia" that is right on point regarding the president and his speech. Bush can say that the situation has improved in Iraq since a year ago when the surge began. What he isn't telling us is that he's paying people like the Shiite leader Al-Sadr off, and he's arming the Sunni side (Saddam's side) of the conflict in Iraq. Sadr doesn't like us, and he's just waiting for us to go in order to do things his way. Bush also spent more than $4,000 on every Iraqi in 2007 alone, which (given cost of living differences) is the equivalent to giving over $121,000 to every American. Bush acts as if we've struck a blow against Bin Laden, but he doesn't mention that there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we went into Iraq. He doesn't mention that our own intelligence services say that the war has made Al Qaeda stronger.
Froomkin points out that the one place where 'the surge' has helped is in buying Bush time. He has gone from a full rebellion (including Congressional Republicans) a year ago, to passing the buck onto the next administration.
1 comment:
Thank-you Olav! This really makes me sick (sic). Please check out the reasons we went into Iraq, as told by Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, and the whole gang. It's 72 WELL SPENT minutes, I assure you. "Leading to War" is a chronological series of newsclips. No opinion and no voice over--no commentary whatsoever. Just the pure LIES of the administration, as told in their speeches to the American public and to congress. It's so gratifying to see it now--you had strange doubts when all this was happening in 2002 and early 2003, and it's gratifying to see it again now, because we now know the reality upon which those strange/ill feelings were based. This is a "must see" for every American:
http://www.leadingtowar.com/
Aloha
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