OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: Codetalkers: How to win friends & influence people in Iraq....

I'm really really glad that things are finally looking up in Iraq right now -- but I can't help but worry about what all this has cost us. According to the New York Times, "The operation itself - the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq - is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington. That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and, over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700 billion in direct spending." $700 BILLION DOLLARS? That's approximately $35,000 per Iraqi! If we had spent that $700,000,000,000 on, say, California, I bet that we coulda built a new McMansion for every single victim of the San Diego fire and still have had enough money left over to build one house apiece for every Katrina victim too.

Ah, the tax-and-spend Republican neo-cons. Thanks to them, I strongly fear that the wealth of America's future generations is going down the toilet like a bad case of dysentery. According to the House of Representatives Committee on the Budget, "The national debt on October 27 [is] $9,061,206,589,592.53. Your share of the national debt [is] $29,883.69."

And according to Congressman Pete Stark, "I'm just amazed that they can't figure out-the Republicans are worried that they can't pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war on children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's [sic] amusement." Ann Coulter may accuse Rep. Stark of over-reacting, but Rep. Stark is right. Where the FREAK are we gonna get the money to afford more of Bush and Cheney's endless fiscal irresponsibility, with or without wars?

I'm not the only one with intestinal problems here. Any close examination of America's budget over the last seven years will clearly show that Bush and Cheney's irresponsible fiscal policies have given the US Treasury dysentery too. And if we don't send some Imodium off to the White House immediately and slow those bad boys down, then there is a very real danger that America is going to collapse from fiscal dehydration soon.

Perhaps historians will call it "Bush and Cheney's Revenge".

PS: While waiting for my flight from Kuwait to Frankfurt, I sat next to a contractor -- the whole freaking airport gate area was filled with contractors so this was not hard to do -- who gave me his personal version of the history of the so-called war in Iraq. "In 2003 and 2004, it was pretty peaceful and then all hell broke loose for the next few years. And now things are starting to stabilize again."

And now that I'm in Frankfurt -- that plane ride was SO different from flying in a C-130 -- some new questions are popping into my brain. For instance, "Why is the population of rural Iraq still living in Third World conditions when they are sitting on top of so much petroleum wealth?" Perhaps I am being naive? And also, "What do I think should happen next in Iraq?" Should our troops get out?

Rep. Dennis Kucinich recommends replacing American troops with an international peace-keeping force. He recognizes that the Iraqis still need help in keeping the peace and I agree with him there. But perhaps putting another force in place might not be the best way to go -- because after all these years, Iraqis are finally starting to trust the Marines in Al Anbar and sometimes even the Army in Baghdad. And if a new "peace-keeping" force were to come in now, that fragile trust-building mechanism would have to start all over again from scratch. However, if the American military is now serving as a de facto peace-keeping force -- and it is -- then perhaps the UN and/or various oil-using nations could help foot the bill, including the European Union, Russia, China, the Saudis and even Iran. Or perhaps the American oil companies who are making so much profit off this so-called war might be persuaded to finally "give something back".

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