How much will the Iraq War cost the U.S. taxpayer?  

On August 1, CNN reported the latest estimates of the cost of the Iraq War are $480 billion more, bringing the total Iraq War cost to $1 trillion.  The war costs $10 billion a month.

It was Paul Wolfowitz, joining with Bush, Cheney and Richard Perle, who engaged in such a rush to launch the Iraq War.  Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Iraq oil revenue would pay for the cost of the war.

Of course, Wolfowitz was wrong.  The U.S. taxpayer is funding the Iraq War.  The oil contract the U.S. leadership wants calls for foreign investors to control 63 of Iraq's oil wells, leaving 17 under Iraqi control.  

Paul Wolfowitz has proven what a colossal failure he has been as an architect of the Iraq War and as World Bank President.

But this is not surprising.  White House resident George W. Bush has proven to be one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.  

Failed individuals have a wavelength that harmonizes with other fabulous failures.  So it was only natural that Bush and Wolfowitz would see eye to eye on launching the disastrous Iraq War spectacle.

This fabulous failure apparently made no evident impact on Bush.  Bush blithely went on to appoint (or should we say anoint because he claims he confers with his other father) Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank.

Appearing at The Blogging Curmudgeon, My Left Wing, and the Independent Bloggers' Alliance.

A Pentagon panel has cleared Paul Wolfowitz in its investigation of his involvement in his girlfriend's Iraq junket.

Paul Wolfowitz, while serving as deputy secretary of defense, personally recommended that his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, be awarded a contract for travel to Iraq in 2003 to advise on setting up a new government, says a previously undisclosed inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general.  

The inquiry, as described by a senior Pentagon official, concluded that there was no wrongdoing in Wolfowitz's role in the hiring of Riza by the Science Applications International Corporation, a Pentagon contractor, because Riza had the expertise required to advise on the role of women in Islamic countries.

 

The investigators also found that Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank, had not exerted improper influence in Riza's hiring. Earlier this week, Science Applications International said an unidentified Defense Department official had directed that she be hired. She had been a World Bank employee for five years at the time.

"Iraq was not involved in 9/11, nor was it a military threat ... but it did have ... oil.  Our `decider' got together with Jesus and ... Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy Defense Secretary.... They agreed on a smorgasbord of rationales for throwing Iraq against the wall: ties to 9/11, WMD, Islamic-Fascists, take your pick."

This Iraq War analysis was written by Wayne Evans of Bothell, Washington in a letter to the editor of the Seattle Times that appeared January 31, 2007.  Evans asked succinctly in concluding his letter if cheerleaders for the Iraq War were 1. Crazy. 2. Liars.  3.  Supremely stupid.  

Evans surmised all three.  He felt that the only way to have accountability was to have open hearings to determine who was responsible for the tragedy of the Iraq War.  That would be a vital necessity of a functioning democracy.

Aren't democracy and freedom the reasons why George Bush periodically insists U.S. service personnel are dying for daily in Iraq?  But even for one serviceman or woman to die or be injured in the unneeded Iraq War calls into serious question why all that applause was unleashed while Bush delivered his State of the Union speech.

We stand at the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies. No solid answers have been provided.  An unconvincing cover-up has been presented, and only under great public duress.  

It is time to assess what really happened on 9/11 and conceive of creative strategies to dig the truth from out of the dusty caverns to which a thoroughly unprincipled unelected government has buried it.

In that the law has been creatively used in a class action lawsuit regarding 9/11 on behalf of deceased victims' family members, another lawsuit that should be promptly filed in federal court is one pertaining to the unconscionable, blood-stained profits that neoconservative warmongers representing America's invisible and unelected government have realized over the corpses and shattered bodies of service personnel and civilians in the Middle East.

The class action lawsuit alluded to earlier creatively employs the RICO statute in an attempt to demand the truth about the causes of the World Trade Center calamities as well as the repercussions that followed.  

Reacting to an article in the June 21 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was headlined, "Killing of GI's Barbaric," reader David Hooper of Seattle wrote an interesting letter to the editors that ran in response to this assertion:

"Indeed, Iraqi insurgents brag about their barbaric deeds.  Americans in contrast, torture and kill suspects in secret prisons, then lie about it.  We bomb babies and cover it up.  We've invaded a little country to get its oil, all the while pretending to bring freedom and democracy.

"We are all barbaric.  Who is better, the braggart or the liar?"

That blunt viewpoint might send a stirring message if the Republican Administration has the courage and fairness to honestly and objectively to stop think about what David Hooper wrote.

Criminals used to cash in when publishers paid them huge sums to go into every gory detail of their crime sprees.

Finally, the law stepped in, and many states have enacted legislation preventing these hardened criminals from profiting on their horror stores.

But tragically, some of the all-star cast in generating war in Iraq is cashing in big time on a fraudulent conflict erected on a tissue of lies.  If their participation in this ghastly venture was treated as a criminal conspiracy to destroy business, they might be tried and sent to jail pronto.

But the war game, where so many people profit and make tainted millions, is another story.  Over the dead bodies of nearly 2,500 American service personnel and around 15,000 wounded along with over 100,000 Iraqis dead, these author vultures can profit along with their publishers.  War contributors are not stopped from selling their contribution to the deadly mistaken war, but are amply rewarded.

Criminals used to cash in when publishers paid them huge sums to go into every gory detail of their crime sprees.

Finally, the law stepped in, and many states have enacted legislation preventing these hardened criminals from profiting on their horror stores.

But tragically, some of the all-star cast in generating war in Iraq is cashing in big time on a fraudulent conflict erected on a tissue of lies.  If their participation in this ghastly venture was treated as a criminal conspiracy to destroy business, they might be tried and sent to jail pronto.

But the war game, where so many people profit and make tainted millions, is another story.  Over the dead bodies of nearly 2,500 American service personnel and around 15,000 wounded along with over 100,000 Iraqis dead, these author vultures can profit along with their publishers.  War contributors are not stopped from selling their contribution to the deadly mistaken war, but are amply rewarded.

The headline story in the Seattle Times on Sunday, March 19, 2006 read, "3 years in, hopes fade for Iraq, neighbors".  The Washington report stated the grim Iraq War reality:  "officials and analysts in the United States, Arab countries, Israel and Europe" are saying, "The invasion had produced a vortex of unintended consequences."  

The outcome reported is, "Militancy is on the rise.  Terrorists are using Iraq as a training base and potential launch pad for attacks elsewhere, according to U.S. officials and documents.  Democratic reform remains largely stymied."

It is glaringly apparent that public support for the Iraq War is sharply declining in the U.S. and is almost non-existent elsewhere.

It has taken the American public a long time to recognize what a dangerous Republican Administration has led the public into.  Congress voted to provide the President with war authority and we know the rest.  Is that something to be proud of?  When anyone dared defy this Republican Administration's rush to war they found their patriotism attacked.

Three cheers to Esquire magazine.

The publication, whose tagline is Man at His Best, delivers an astounding 16-page spread in its March issue. Special Report: The Iraq War, Three Years Later (not available online) contains the following articles:

• The Best Years of Our Lives - After being stateside for the past year, one Iraq vet catches up with the guys he served with.
  
  
• Ten Numbers on the State of the Iraq-War Veterans - Shows the impact of a conflict that's about to surpass the Korean War in duration.
  
  
• The Monks of War - An interesting piece on Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, and Commander on the `Thunder Run' to Baghdad, Gen. William Wallace.
  
  
• What They Were Thinking - My personal favorite; predictions from the prominent war planners in 2003 on how the war would go. Oh, boy...

I've got all the goodies (well, except for the Evangeline Lilly spread) below the fold...

I don't usually prowl around Newsmax, but I took Tom's quiz (humph) in Template for Invasion, and bumped into this interesting article, Bush WMD Response to Target Bill Clinton.  

The next counter-offensive to squash Bush's war critics is presented here:

U.S. News & World Report says the RNC ad will spotlight Clinton's Feb. 17, 1998 speech on Iraq, where the former prez "guaranteed" that Saddam Hussein would use his weapons of mass destruction.

I had wondered where the winger's recent interest in Bill was going, since he is not someone on the WH's A list.  A quick snoop around the net produced a few details, but nothing coherent.  Here they are in case they do, or do not, have any relevance to the latest anything but the truth White House.

George Bush has been quick to preach sacrifice to the American people regarding Iraq.  His request harkens back to two statements I heard about war and peace that I never forgot, and that Bush has made germane.

I knew a Los Angeles travel agent who had been a World War Two member of General James Doolittle's crack Flying Tigers.  His Army Air Force plane was shot down during the war and he spent time in a Japanese POW camp.  "We people who have experienced and seen the destruction of combat are very careful about one thing," he told me.  "When we think people are too quick about advocating war we step back and study the issue very carefully.  When you've been there and seen the damage of war you're much more reluctant about advocating it and greatly concerned about seeking ways to prevent it."