As Paul Craig Roberts writes in America 's Superpower Days Are Over ~ " Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush 's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush 's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey 's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war ..President George W. Bush has destroyed America 's economy along with America 's reputation as a truthful, compassionate, peace-loving nation that values civil liberties and human rights ."
So there you have it ~ the great neocon experiment has miserably failed and, of course, our own media can't and do not want to see the obvious .
But our neighbors to the north see it all to clearly.
Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun, compares the eminent fall of the Cheney/Bush administration to the last days of the decaying Soviet Obligarchy.
Excerpt: " A smell of "fin du regime" hangs over Washington, just as it did over the last days of decaying Soviet oligarchy. An out-of-touch leader presides over a lost foreign war and a morass of influence peddling and bribery, as the secret police struggle to keep a lid on growing dissent."
Allen L Roland
THE 'FIN DE REGIME'?
By Eric Margolis
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11485.htm
01/08/06 "Toronto Sun" -- -- WASHINGTON -- China's Taoists philosophers warned that you become what you hate. We see this paradox in Washington, where the current administration increasingly reminds one of the old Soviet Union.
The U.S.S.R. went bankrupt after spending 40% of national income on the military. President George Bush's administration will spend a staggering $419.3 billion US on the military this fiscal year. An additional $130 billion US has been budgeted in 2006 for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
That's $10.8 billion a month -- 40% above previous estimates -- and somewhat more than the monthly cost of the Vietnam War at its height. Add to this huge sum an estimated $1.5 billion in monthly secret expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan by CIA and Pentagon intelligence.
Astoundingly, U.S. military spending in 2006 will equal the rest of the world's total combined military expenditures. I just saw an ad for the new, $115-million F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, trumpeting how its radar can "intercept communications of insurgents." Using a $115-million aircraft to listen to cellphone calls by a bunch of jihadis in Waziristan staggers the imagination.
Meanwhile, Moscow on the Potomac is in an uproar over government spying on citizens, torture, and what appears to be the mother of all influence-peddling scandals. Revelations that the super-secret National Security Agency and FBI have been monitoring domestic as well as international telecommunications have roused even the deadheads in Congress and the lapdog media. FBI agents are reportely spying on such nefarious "terrorists" as vegetarians and animal rights activists.
Bush (shades of Leonid Brezhnev) claims the right to override any laws because the U.S. is at war. "Terrorists" ("enemies of the state" in Soviet talk) threaten the U.S., so anything goes. What next -- cancelling next fall's elections because of the threat of the phantom al-Qaida?
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