This site thinks so. 

If you hunt through the categories, you’ll see many ideas better than occupying Iraq while incurring tens of thousands of U.S. troop casualties.

In this Truthout interview (by Geoffry Millard), Phil Donahue exhorts: “Don’t sanitize the war.”  Who are the perpetrators of this effort to sanitize the war?  Politicians and the media, for starters.  That effort to sanitize the bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq is the main message of the newly-released movie that Donahue co-directed: “Body of War.”

The film’s subject is paralyzed Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, who was shot through the spine in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Young’s transformation from war veteran to antiwar hero (as the movie poster boasts) is mixed well with the speech of Senator Byrd (D-West Virginia) against the resolution giving President Bush the power to invade Iraq.

In this interview, Donahue stresses that Senator Byrd was one of only 23 senators who voted no (133 members of the House voted no).  

The purpose of the film:  “We would like to put wind to the back of the anti-war movement.” 

Price Of Oil
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Our Saudi Friends
Keefe, The Denver Post

Tanking Economy
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Iraq Milestone 4000
Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

McCain and the Iraq War
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

What is a meaningful way of understanding the immense amount of money the United States spends in Iraq each day? This simple video by American Friends Service Committee compellingly gets this point across.

How does one most fairly frame this issue of what the United States is spending in Iraq? It’s not only a matter of whether we should be in Iraq for strategic reasons (every reason presented by the Bush Administration has proven to be untrue). It’s also a matter of whether there are vastly superior ways of spending that immense amount of money (there are, as illustrated by the video below).

I’ve previously tried to illustrate the immense expense we are incurring in Iraq here , here , here and here.

Charlie Rose is having such a difficult time listening to his guests, because he has so obviously bought into the standard mainstream media view on the Iraq conflict (which is essentially the view developed by the Bush Administration).   He appears simultaneously ignorant yet preachy as two men with genuine familiarity with the people of Iraq repeatedly burst his bubble. 

This segment is well worth watching to hear the guests (Ali Fadhil and Sinan Antoon) uttering such an impressive stream of simple truths about Iraq.  Lesson number one:  what we call “Iraq” has little resemblance to the country the U.S. purportedly attempted to ”liberate.”  We’ve made a shambles of Iraq.

Most American media tells you nothing at all about what’s happening to real people on the ground.  This lack of information is astounding, given the Bush Administration’s constant claims of “success” in Iraq.   I’m tired of reading sterilized accounts of life in the Green Zone.   I really want to know what we are getting for the $13 billion we spend on the Iraq occupation each month.

At the recommendation of an article in Salon Premium (”The unsung heroes of Iraq war coverage“), I have now found what I’ve been looking for:  a blog called “Inside Iraq,” which is

updated by Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers. They are based in Baghdad and outlying provinces. These are firsthand accounts of their experiences. Their complete names are withheld for security purposes.

At Inside Iraq I have finally found voices that sound authentic who are telling me about the real lives of real people who live in Iraq. The words of these journalists are written in plain English, but they’re difficult to read on an emotional level.  I plan to visit this site regularly.

I refuse to use the term “war” when referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq for these reasons.

Do you remember the many politicians and news media personalities who assured us that we needed to go to “war” with Iraq and that it would be easy, fast and relatively painless for American soldiers?   Well, Huffpo has put many of those quotes in one convenient place, breaking them into basic categories, such as:

CAKEWALK!

HOW MANY TROOPS WILL BE NEEDED?

WHAT ABOUT CASUALTIES?

HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?  and HOW LONG WILL IT LAST?

Here are some key quotes from “How long will it last?”:

“Now, it isn’t gong to be over in 24 hours, but it isn’t going to be months either.”
- Richard Perle, Chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, 7/11/02

“The idea that it’s going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.”
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 11/15/02

“It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could be six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
- Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2/7/03

“It won’t take weeks… Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there’s no question that it will.”
- Bill O’Reilly, 2/10/03

“There is zero question that this military campaign…will be reasonably short. … Like World War II for about five days.”
- General Barry R. McCaffrey, national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News, 2/18/03

“Our military superiority is so great — it’s far greater than it was in the Gulf War, and the Gulf War was over in 100 hours after we bombed for 43 days… Now they can bomb for a couple of days and then just roll into Baghdad… The odds are there’s going to be a war and it’s going to be not for very long.”
- Former President Bill Clinton, 3/6/03

“I think it will go relatively quickly…weeks rather than months.”
- Vice President Dick Cheney, 3/16/03

We must remember that these aren’t mere words.  Saying these sorts of words had consequences that many people still don’t seem to appreciate (given that many of the people who pushed a “war” with Iraq now want to start a “war” with Iran).   Glenn Greenwald wrote about this moral obtuseness of many of those people who led the charge to invade Iraq:

The most unadorned admissions of error amount to little more than a concession that they simply assessed the costs and benefits inaccurately. And even with that extremely narrow concession, none of them — either in Slate or elsewhere — even reference in passing the fact that the war they cheered on ended the lives of hundreds of thousands (at least) of innocent Iraqi citizens and caused the internal and external displacement of millions more. That just doesn’t exist in the calculus.

More strikingly, not a single one of them appears to have learned the real lesson worth learning from the whole disaster: The U.S. should not — and has no right to — invade, bomb and occupy other nations that haven’t attacked or even threatened to attack us. None of them say: “Wars that aren’t directly in response to an actual or imminent attack shouldn’t be commenced because doing so leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or millions of human beings for no justifiable reason.” Not even the most regretful war advocate seems to have reached that conclusion.

Obama’s full speech is here.    What follows is a long excerpt from this October 2, 2002 speech:

Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the President today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?

Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn’t simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil. Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

A new Salon.com book review gives us the depressing and infuriating answers to how much the Iraq adventure is costing the citizens of the United States.   The book, written by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, is titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War:  The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.”   In typical dyfunctional White House style, White House spokesman Tony Fratto has argued that the book is misguided because “One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”  As though the occupation of Iraq has anything to do with 9/11 . . .

The numbers presented by Stiglitz and Bilmes are truly staggering:

“The Three Trillion Dollar War” talks about two types of war-related expenses: budgetary and social. Budgetary costs include operational spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, which they estimate will total from $1.7 trillion to $2.7 trillion. (Throughout the book, the authors put forward two sets of figures: one based on a “best-case scenario” and one on a far more likely “realistic-moderate” scenario.) This figure includes the expense of keeping armies in the field, paying veteran-related costs, replacing equipment ($400 billion for this alone), and paying interest on the vast debt we have incurred to fight the war. So far, Congress has actually appropriated $645 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, plus the $200 billion Bush asked for in 2008. As the authors point out, this is more than the U.S. spends annually on Medicare and Medicaid combined. And the monthly “burn rate” to pay for the wars has gone steadily up, from $4.4 billion in 2003 to $16 billion today. This means that every American household is spending $138 a month on the current operating expenses of the wars.

The additional “social” costs that are not borne by the government are harder to calculate — and more controversial.

As an aside, I find the neocon sleight of hand interesting.  The usual neocon line when it comes to taxes is that money paid as taxes really belongs to the people.   Fair enough.   Why then, don’t neocons emphasize that these wild, irresponsible, inefficient and often corrupt expenditures on the Iraq occupation (I don’t call it a “war”) are being paid with my money and your money, not “government” money?  If any of you American families out there have a better use for $138 each month than blowing up buildings and people in Iraq, raise your hand!

In an interview published by McClatchy Newspapers Feb 27, 2008, Stiglitz warns that the worst is yet to come regarding our military expenses in Iraq and Afghanistan:

In an interview, Stiglitz said that too much of the public debate had been over the wars’ operational costs while the real budget strains would show up only years from now.

“The peak expenditures are way out,” he said, noting that the peak expenditures for World War II vets came in 1993.

The McClatchy article reminds us of the rosy 2003 predictions of the Bush Administration:

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in March 2003, the Bush administration predicted that the war would be self-financing and that rebuilding the nation would cost less than $2 billion.

Being off by a few decimal points in grade school gets a student a well-deserved “F.”  

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Republican political anatomy.   You see, I’m not only an armchair anthropologist, but I’m a social neuro-surgeon (a brand-new expertise, created today).   After careful review of all available relevant data, I have developed a precise chart (click on the thumbnail below) detailing each of the major features of the modern Republican brain.  

No, you won’t find “Iraq” on this anatomical diagram, even though it reveals each of the major neural substructures found in the modern Republican brain.  That’s because the modern Repubublican has developed relatively recently.  No specialized “Iraq” module has thus had time to evolve. You will nonetheless find each of the brain structures that, working together, compel the instigation of multiple fear-induced, needless, destructive, ineptly planned, corrupt and potentially non-ending military conflicts in the Middle East. 

Whenever sufficient numbers of these malignant features are found in the brains of those who hold substantial political power, one can expect the atrophy of an entire country, absent immediate and dramatic political resuscitation. 

Without further ado, here it is.  Just click on the thumbnail for all the gory details:

If you’d like to review some fascinating and rigorous psychological data of what it means to be a conservative, check out this post regarding a study by Frank Sulloway or this post considering the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt.

Earlier this week, the AP reporter Nedra Pickler published an odious story that questioned Barack Obama’s patriotism through insinuation. The entire focus of the story was to imply that Sen. Obama may not be sufficiently patriotic to be president because he doesn’t wear an American flag pin, and because he supposedly didn’t put his hand over his heart during a recent singing of the National Anthem. (No, really.)

The article used what are now standard tricks in the playbook of a hollow and degraded media: using the “some say” technique to pass on right-wing innuendo as if it were serious news, making sure to give “equal time” to rumors and facts, and focusing obsessively on utterly irrelevant trivialities to the exclusion of legitimate and important issues. (Haircuts, anyone?) Until recently, Obama hadn’t been the presumptive nominee, and the media-abetted right-wing attacks had focused mainly on Hillary Clinton. But as he increasingly takes on frontrunner status, it was inevitable that some of this slime would start coming his way.

I’ve written before about why I didn’t intend to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primary (and I didn’t), but I was equivocal about Obama. His voting record is all-around solid progressive; what I was more concerned about was the way he’d handle himself in the general election. Any Democratic presidential candidate is sure to face a barrage of vicious personal attacks. Unlike Clinton - whose voting record I’ve expressed my discontent with, but whose willingness to defend herself was not an issue - Obama seemed more of an unknown quantity to me. Too many Democrats have lost elections by being timid in the face of Republican attacks, running away from their own positions or failing to defend themselves when criticized - or, worse, trying to deflect criticism by aping Republican positions. (A tip to Democratic politicians: When given a choice between real Republican and Republican-lite, conservatives vote for the real thing, and liberals don’t vote.) This incident was one of the first tests of how Obama would handle himself under pressure.

Today Obama responded, and I was extremely pleased to see that he seems to understand very well the game being played here:

“A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?

“That is a debate I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism.”

Yes, yes, yes! This is the kind of response I’ve been waiting for so long to hear from a progressive politician - one that doesn’t tacitly concede the principle behind the Republican attack, that doesn’t try to deflect it by acting more like them, but one that exposes their hypocrisy and takes the fight to them on their own turf. I’ve always firmly believed that Democrats could win elections in a landslide if they stopped running away from the mere whiff of criticism and started boldly and fearlessly standing up for what they’re supposed to believe in. There’s ample ground to take the fight to the enemy, as Obama’s response shows.

Given the outrageous injustices that have ensued when the Republicans are in power, the blatant and shameless way they sought and still seek to frighten the public and violate the Constitution for their own political benefit, they’ve given us more than enough rope to hang them with. They are defenseless on weak ground, which is why they attack constantly. But we need a candidate who will point this out, who will make the case with fervor and passion, and who will not be cowed by pathetic attacks from the right-wing rumor mill. After today, I’m far more hopeful that Obama could be that candidate.

I watched a few minutes of a Sunday morning Fox political program, and noticed that their fair and balanced coverage of presidential politics had several distinct spins.

On the republican side, McCain is the anointed candidate.

On the Democrat side, the race will be decided by the super-delegates. Every bit of subtle mud that can be slung at Obama is being dug and slung. Why just Obama?

The message is clear: Conservatives think that Obama is electable, and they are not particularly worried about Clinton. It’s a safe bet that they have a campaign set up to effectively counter a Clinton candidacy; they’ve had over a decade to do the research. But they might fear that a proverbial left-field candidate like Obama might do something rash if elected, like expose and change the underpinnings of the lengthy and profitable electoral process.

Maybe they think that Muslim radicals will have a harder time convincing their young followers that Barack Hussein Obama is the enemy, and the profitable war will wind down.

Perhaps they simply think that he is activating the youth vote, and once the draft-age population is politically involved, all the profitable “wars” (on drugs, on terror, etc) will fade.

Possibly they fear that his multicultural upbringing and education will make it impossible for him to see just the narrow picture when asked to approve dumb laws and expensive and futile unfunded mandates.

Maybe it’s just that their pollsters think that someone with less of a melanin deficiency is more electable than one with two complete x chromosomes.

But, hey. I’m just an ignorant blogger.

New unbelievable rule from the Bush Administration, as reported by MSNBC:

A Bush administration plan to crack down on contract fraud has a multibillion-dollar loophole: The proposal to force companies to report abuse of taxpayer money will not apply to work overseas, including projects to secure and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why these two exceptions? Is it because the system would be overwhelmed by the fraud they would find? Or will one best find the answer by following the money?

“I hate to sound cynical, but what lobbyist working for a contractor in Iraq wanted this get-out-of-jail card?” asked Patrick Burns, spokesman for the government watchdog group.

I learned of this detestable new Bush policy on the same day I received my copy of Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers,” a DVD by Robert Greenwald. I’ll comment on this video soon.

With the possible spoiler of Mike Huckabee, it’s clear that John McCain is set to be the candidate the Democrats need to beat in November. The irony of the ongoing battle between Hillary and Obama is that, policy-wise, they just aren’t that different. There were some real differences between the Republicans, but those differences are not what McCain seems to be gearing up to run on. He is all about Iraq.

McCain has to convince hardline conservatives that he’s their guy. Why? Because he has occasionally backed some responsible legislation, like McCain-Feingold. He refused to sugarcoat our waning industrial possibilities while campaigning in Michigan. He has spoken positively about amnesty programs for illegal immigrants. He has not always been a friend to Big Business. True Red Republicans of the Bush League see the potential for fiscal treason in McCain—that he might raise taxes, control campaign spending, or propose, back, and sign Democratic-sounding legislation that would take the country toward *gasp* Socialism.

I have a hard time squaring complaints from anyone that McCain is somehow not a fiscal conservative when Bush just put forward a three-point-one TRILLION dollar budget (with the largest slice for defense spending since WWII). It just goes to show, all the rhetoric about Democratic profligacy is really just a complaint that the Dems spend the money on things the Republicans don’t like. It’s not the money, it’s the programs.

Setting that aside, though, McCain obviously doesn’t think he can sway them all. So he’s about to start campaigning hard on the pitfalls of an Iraq withdrawal. I will wait for the P-word to rear its ugly torso—Patriotism. The suggestion will be made that anyone wishing to pull out is somehow not patriotic. We saw this under Bush, aspersions cast on some of the most loyal, patriotic, and demonstrably courageous people who suggested that maybe this war was a bad idea and that, furthermore, we more or less screwed it up by going in blind, deaf, and predetermined.

I hear echoes of the Sixties all over again, and of all the people who should know better, it is John McCain. (”Pull out…doesn’t sound manly to me, Bub. I say leave it in there till the job is done and they’re thoroughly messed up.”)

The problem is, this may well play for the American voter. When we have serious doubts, we tend to stick with what we’re doing rather than risk change. We have to have our faces rubbed in the muck of bad decision-making before we finally say—in sufficient numbers to matter—enough is enough. I am not sanguine about the political maturity of the American people.

And the thing is, we aren’t getting our faces rubbed in it. We’re adapting. Gasoline is high, the American industrial base is shrinking, we have infrastructure problems galore, but we’re making accommodations and doing fine, thank you. People complain, but by and large we haven’t actually lost anything that matters. So much of this debate is still in the realm of hypotheticals, theories, ideas, and potentials.

So we look to the Democratic candidates and what do we see? One old school politician who would probably do a fine enough job and maybe make a few worthwhile changes, mainly around the edges, and one young firebrand who is promising Big Changes. And a serious look at their policies shows that, really, they differ by degrees, not ideas. It’s going to devolve into a popularity and demographics battle. Which barrier do we want to break first? Gender or race? And underlying that, is the question no one wants to ask: does it really matter anymore?

In my misbegotten youth, I used to be what they call a Single Issue Voter. Was a time I voted against anyone who wanted to erode the Second Amendment. Yes, I was one of those Right to Bear Arms purists. I had bought into the argument that an armed populace kept the government in line and the first step towards tyranny is to disarm the population at large. There’s truth to that in history, but today, here, in this country, it’s a rather weak argument. Power doesn’t work that way. Not to say it couldn’t, but for now it simply doesn’t.

I could also argue that anyone wishing to tamper with the Constitution was de facto untrustworthy. Which may also be true. People doing good for me whether I want it or not is loathesome. Make the subject anything but guns and you see this immediately.

But the truth is, single issue voting only means you’re not informed, interested, or intellectually capable of understanding multiple issues. Or it means you don’t care about anything else, which is just as bad. It is stupid.

As it has transpired, most of the Second Amendment purists voted into office in the last forty years have also brought with them a whole suite of ideologies I cannot abide. They are, many of them, the natural constituency of the George W. Bush League. That single issue—preserving an unquestioned right to own, carry, and by implication use something which I, in fact, do not own or carry—comes packaged with people whose other policy positions I find absurd or dangerous.

The word Balance comes to mind. Tricky at the best of times.

McCain will campaign on a single issue. Oh, there will be other policy positions he’ll talk about and want to deal with, but at present it looks like he’s going to threaten America with the awful prospect of “pulling out” if we vote for the Democrats. He will polarize people over a Single Issue that will push all the rest to the side in an emotional gambit to convince us to—wait for it, he may yet use the phrase—Stay The Course.

In such an environment, the first casualty is reason. You can’t even get close to truth without that.

I would really like to see the two Democratic front-runners make a deal, put together a ticket that can roll over this irrationalism. The Republicans are once again demonstrating their major strength—they’re forming ranks and closing up behind a candidate and they will see it through as a group. For a bunch of people who profess to believe in American Individuality, they sure can cast it aside quickly enough for their Cause. Democrats traditionally devour each other.

The one factor we have left to see whether McCain has a reasonable shot or not is who he picks as a running mate. Because that will indicate who he thinks his successor will be, ought to be. As it appears right now, if Hilary and Obama made a deal and ran together, it would be the best of all possible worlds. Either one of them is acceptable to me.

I suppose I should say whether I think we should get out of Iraq. Saying— believing—that we should never have gone in to begin with is not the same thing. Now it would be like making a mess of a paraplegic’s kitchen, then leaving without cleaning up the mess. So I guess I’m forced into the opinion that we would be ill-advised to simply pull out until Iraq really does have a security base that works well enough. Otherwise, they will be divvied up by the various factions outside their borders. Iran has, in fact, an old score to settle, and they are more dangerous to future peace in the region than Iraq ever was. Saddam ultimately was just greedy. The Iranian hierarchy are Inspired.

But that doesn’t mean I’d vote for John McCain—all the other things he’s bringing to the table are things I do not really support.

Single Issue Voting is for morons.

Is there a better way to spend the money we are currently spending in Iraq?

The January 18, 2008 issue of Nature reports that Congress is telling NASA that NASA needs to dig up $60 Million in funding for a planet-hunting telescope out of its general budget, money that simple doesn’t exist (this article is available on line only to subscribers).  NASA is outraged. Congress will not provide any additional funding. The stated purpose of the project is undeniably worthy according to scientists.  Because of the attitude displayed by Congress, however, other NASA projects are also endangered, including “missions to study dark energy, gravity waves and X-ray astronomy.”

The thing that struck me on reading this article is the tiny amount in controversy regarding this NASA project, relative to enormous size of the Iraq budget.  We spend $275 million per day to do the things we do in Iraq.

This makes me wonder? How many other worthy science projects are not getting funding because of Iraq expenses? It would be interesting and depressing to see people raise their hands in response to this question:  How many of you have had federal funding denied on worthy projects because of the “lack of money in the budget.”  We need to constantly call “lack of money” for what it is. It’s not lack of money.  Rather, we’re spending that money on Iraq.

It’s not simply that we are pissing away money on the “War on Terror”  (BTW, it’s not a war and it’s not about terror, though it pretends to be).  And this “war” effort is even worse than a simple misallocation of money.  We are causing massive political damage by doing the things we are doing in Iraq. People around the world hate what we are doing in Iraq and have no respect for the reasons we utter for pursuing this “war.”  The great majority of Americans now agree with the people around the world (those people we used to scoff at when they doubted our intentions and methods).

How many worthy projects will never be funded? And how many unfunded humanitarian projects are not being funded because of the “war”? What could that money have accomplished?  What about new cures for malaria, TB, cancer and dozens of other diseases that take the lives of millions every year?  What about funding new methods of conserving, generating and storing energy, to lessen our dependence on oil?  What about new improved methods of birth control, to reduce the demand for abortions, which, in turn, might put somewhat of a damper on the culture war that is tearing the U.S. apart?

Dollars and hours are fungible, which means that the Iraq “war” is utterly immoral, especially so in that it has accomplished none of its stated objectives; further, it’s failed to accomplish those objectives at horrific cost.  We can see much of the carnage and destruction, but there is equal amount of damage that we can’t see.  This invisible damage consists of things that we could have done with the time and money we have squandored on Iraq.  Iraq is, and always was, a domestic issue.

All of these unfunded projects must be viewed in the context of the hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded and the millions that have been displaced in pursuit of the misbegotten so-called “war.”

The Center for Public Intergrity has now added them up.  There were 935 lies from high-ranking Bush officials.  All of them designed to convince us to invade Iraq for no good reason.  Here’s a summary:

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

This disturbing NYT graphic allows you to count them up, all the deaths that billions of U.S. tax dollars can buy.  It includes all of the deaths of those in uniforms caused by the conflict, not just the deaths of U.S. soldiers.  It does not show the civilian deaths. “[S]adly, civilian fatalities in Iraq last year were simply too numerous to represent on a single newspaper page.”

Scientific American has just published a comprehensive article on how to switch the United States substantially over to sunlight. The headline: “By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions.”

The cost of this immense clean-energy-producing plan would be $420 billion. That’s a HUGE amount of money. Where could we EVER get that sort of money? Oh, yeah. The U.S. has already spent that much on the Iraq debacle. For the amount of money that we’ve wasted in Iraq, we could have already funded a great way to wean ourselves from mideast oil.

Now, specifically, what could $420 Billion buy if one spent it wisely? It’s an incredible investment that would pay for itself over and over. Here are the highlights of the plan, according to the Scientific American article:

Solar plants consume little or no fuel, saving billions of dollars year after year. The infrastructure would displace 300 large coal-fired power plants and 300 more large natural gas plants and all the fuels they consume. The plan would effectively eliminate all imported oil, fundamentally cutting U.S. trade deficits and easing political tension in the Middle East and elsewhere. Because solar technologies are almost pollution-free, the plan would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 1.7 billion tons a year, and another 1.9 billion tons from gasoline vehicles would be displaced by plug-in hybrids refueled by the solar power grid. In 2050 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would be 62 percent below 2005 levels, putting a major brake on global warming.

The plan would include photovoltaic farms, pressurized caverns for storing the solar power, concentrated solar power (using numerous mirrors to focus the light as heat) and long-distance direct current transmission systems (because most of the solar power would be produced in the desert Southwest, far from major cities.

Think Progress gives you the line-up of all the major players and tells you where they are now.

Poland is pulling out of Iraq, according to the Associated Press. 

Poland’s new prime minister outlined ambitious plans for the next four years in his inaugural address Friday, saying he plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year but also push for stronger relations with NATO.

U.S. State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said Friday that the U.S. had been discussing the issue with the new Polish government and was grateful for Poland’s contribution.

So here’s my question:  Why isn’t the Bush Administration railing on Poland, accusing Poland of cut and run, accusing Poland of being unpatriotic, suggesting that Poland is now an ally of Osama Bin Laden?

And if Poland can quit the Iraq project without being disparaged, why not treat dissenting Americans with similar respect?

As reported by The Raw Story, the U.S. is hemorhaging money into it’s Middle East adventures.  The numbers are staggering:

The United States is spending about $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country to pursue wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to new estimates that show the wars will cost about $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

More than one-fourth of the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan — $705 billion — will go to paying interest on the wars’ costs, which are being funded with borrowed dollars, according to an estimate to be released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office. Iraq accounts for about 80 percent of the costs with a $1.9 trillion tab, including $564 million in interest, a House budget committee staff director told USA Today, which reported the numbers Wednesday morning.

“The number is so big, it boggles the mind,” Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) told the newspaper.

The CBO previously estimated the war’s costs at $1.6 trillion, which did not include interest payments or Bush’s latest request for an extra $46 billion in war funding.

Back home, bridges are crumbling, students have trouble getting student loans and we allegedly can’t afford to have universal health coverage for children.  Therefore, more than ever, Iraq is a domestic issue.

Here’s what precipitated Maher’s rant:

Four years ago Tucker Carlson asked Britney Spears on CNN, “A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?” And Britney, who was chewing gum throughout the entire interview, answered, “Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.”

How many Blackwater incidents like this are unreported?  I am just amazed when I hear repeated  Republican claims that things are going well in Iraq.  Until I know that reporters can wander out of the Green Zone un-escorted, I’ll continue to assume that no news is bad news. 

Make sure that you scroll down and look at the photos of all the other phony soldiers too. The reason for Rush’s deferment puts it into even better context.

In an alternet.org article entitled “The Mega-Lie Called the ‘War on Terror’: A Masterpiece of Propaganda,” Richard Behan sums up the evidence exposing the “War on Terror” for what it really is: a repulsive attempt to achieve world dominance through militaristic means.  The article includes a succinct chronology substantiating the author’s claims.

What is the basis for the “terror” of the “War on Terror”?  Good question: 

Impeachment will expose the fraudulence of the “War on Terror” and liberate us from the pall of fear the Bush administration has deliberately cast upon the country. Both political parties will be free to speak the truth: Terrorism is real and a cause for concern, but it is not a reason for abject fear.

We need only compare the hazard of al Qaeda to the threat posed by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. On the one hand is a wretched group of sad fanatics — perhaps 50,000 in all — clever enough to commandeer airliners with box cutters. On the other was a nation of 140 million people, a powerful economy, a standing army of hundreds of divisions, a formidable navy and air force and thousands of nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles pre-aimed at American targets.

We were a vigilant but poised and confident people then, not a nation commanded to cower in fear. We can and must regain that strength and self-assurance.