WAR -- The Money [Part 2]

As they say, let's keep it real. Comparing Jimmy Carter to Warren Harding or any other president is not what dumping Bush and his insanely disastrous war is all about. It's about coming to our senses in regard to the waste of money needed at home and, even more importantly, the loss of brave lives in service to a flawed and failed war policy.

But because the election is on, and because the economy has become the main issue, here's more on the monetary costs of the war from a recent issue of the London Review of Books .

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The Money
Adam Shatz

"Shortly before the invasion of Iraq, George Bush’s economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated that the war would cost $200 billion. ‘Baloney,’ Donald Rumsfeld fumed, offering a figure of $50-60 billion, some of which he said would be supplied by America’s friends. Andrew Natsios, the head of the Agency for International Development, told Ted Koppel on Nightline that postwar Iraq could be rebuilt for $1.7 billion. Koppel was astonished: ‘No more than that?’ ‘For the reconstruction,’ Natsios replied. ‘And then there’s $700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid because it’s charities that get that money.’ According to Paul Wolfowitz, the reconstruction would be financed by increased oil revenue in Iraq. The war had nothing to do with oil, of course, but the country’s vast reserves happily ensured that postwar ‘nation-building’ would be cheap, if not free."
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And now estimated costs of the Iraq tragedy are placed around $2 TRILLION! And why aren't the editorial pages of every newspaper filled with denunciations, why aren't citizens, Republicans and Democrats, demanding, marching, writing, blogging, calling their representatives to stop the war now?