The Government Accounting Office estimates the cost to date of the Iraq war at $420 billion.
3300 of our soldiers have been killed thus far in a war that is unjustified, which has no end plan, which accrues the American people no benefit, which has poisoned international friendships, and which has disgraced our history.
In addition to the American military casualties, it has been estimated that 800 American contractors have been killed and a number upwards of 600,000 Iraqis.
Doing the grisly arithmetic, each billion spent on the Iraq war has yielded eight dead American soldiers, two dead American contractors, and 1430 dead Iraqis.
There is now in the making -- actually in a contest of partisan one-upmanship -- a supplementary Iraq war budget of approximately $120 billion. Budgets, as everyone knows, are simply plans to allocate and to spend money. So the obvious question arising here is what are we going to get for our money?
More grisly arithmetic shows that what we'll get for another $120 billion are 960 more dead American soldiers, 240 more dead contractors, and 172,000 dead Iraqis.
Can any fairly sane, modestly humane and half decent citizen want to "buy" any more of this tragedy, this treachery? Why do any of it?
It is time for the madness to stop. Not one more dollar should be budgeted for foreign military operations beyond the costs of returning our troops home.
