The Bush administration routinely fudges the numbers but an honest analysis provides a sobering look at the true cost of the war.
The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday.
The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis...
The question must be asked, what better serves our national interest? Intervention in a civil conflict that has long grown beyond our ability to control, much less manage, or the building of strong infrastructure at home? It's no surprise what our leading civilian warmonger advocates.
"Either you think the war in Iraq supports America's national security, or not," said Frederick W. Kagan, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "If you think national security won't be harmed by withdrawing from Iraq, of course you would want to see that money spent elsewhere. I myself think that belief, on a certain level, is absurd, so the question of focusing on how much money we are spending there is irrelevant."
Irrelevant if your living and your reputation depends on keeping the troops mired in a losing conflict rather than admit every prediction you made was totally wrong and counterproductive to the national interest. But for our children and grandchildren, who will be paying the debt on this folly for decades to come, the question is more than just relevant, it will be vital to their future economic security.
Kagan's selfishness is showing when he advocates starving the future to feed his bloated ego in the present.
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