Herbert: Now and Forever, The Iraq War

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond.

Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion.

Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.

A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.

Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.

“The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end,” said Senator Charles Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, “is the loss of life that is occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even President Bush put forward.”

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Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has been considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that would last for many years, if not decades. There has been very little public discussion and no thorough analysis of the overall implications of such a policy.

What is indisputable, however, is that everything associated with the Iraq war has cost vastly more than the administration’s absurdly sunny forecasts. The direct appropriations are already roughly 10 times the amount of the administration’s original estimates of the entire cost of the war.

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More!

referring to this occupation as the Iraq "War". The war was over 4 years ago, and to all those idiots who want to stay and "win", we already won. If deposing Saddaam was winning, we won. If eliminating all those WMDs was winning, we won. They just keep changing the definition of winning to keep up the war economy. We're not at war, we're moderating their civil war.

who handles this.

Real Leaders are willing to stand and act in the face
of opposition.

When they did not stop the war after being elected, I fear
the Democrats forfeited our Leadership.