Worried about the Economy? $11 Billion a Month of Your Tax Dollars Goes for War

Republicans always talk about "fiscal responsibility." They blame Dems for "government spending". Never mind that historically, in the last century or so, Republicans are always gutting the economy and wasting money on profligate wars. Now they've saddled us with a war that is essentially a farce and a lie - written in blood and bleeding dollars - I mean, hemorrhaging dollars - by the hour. Here's a little news to chew on:

The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government's credit card.

"Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007," the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.

War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

"It keeps going up, up and away," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said of the money spent in Iraq since U.S. troops invaded in 2003.

"We're seeing the war costs continue to spiral upward. It is the additional troops plus additional costs per troop plus the over-reliance on private contractors, which also explodes the costs," said Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who opposed the war.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Congress has written checks for $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such related activities as Iraq reconstruction, the CBO said.

There are around 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan.

$11 Billion a Month

Of the total, the CBO estimated that $440 billion had been spent on fighting in Iraq launched with the goal of ousting President Saddam Hussein from power and securing weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

All of the Iraq and Afghanistan war money - about $11 billion a month - is effectively being put on a government credit card at a time when U.S. government debt has skyrocketed to more than $9 trillion, up from around $5.6 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001.

They say they'll "cut taxes". Does this mean "borrow the money from China instead"?And does anyone give a damn what those taxes are being spent on? On "security" and "anti-terror" done by creating killing fields overseas that will blowback some time soon ... maybe December 21, 2012 or so...

Island America Meets the Killing Fields

Bridgethought of the Day: Hell on earth has a life of its own, like cancer, impervious to the needs or nature of its unwilling host. Welcome to the consequences of invasion. We are building a killing field.

Dahr Jamail, the great reporter on Iraq, has written an article describing the current situation in Iraq as having created schizophrenia - social schizophrenia - from living in two diametrically opposite worlds: the killing fields in Iraq, which have gone from horrors-come-true to gruesome constant survival failures; and the "Disneyland" bubble-world of the United States, or what I call "Island America". Here, as he so eloquently put it, we can simply mouseclick to another web page, essentially "eliminating" the "disturbance" of what really is going on in Iraq, and go back to our creature comforts and entertainment, distanced by this huge moat.

"In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.
In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation." This from Mr. Jamail's own experience. But you can sense more from an excerpt from an email sent to a friend of his from her friend in Iraq:

"I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "

This insightful article is prefaced by Tom Englehardt's reference to a breaking story in The Nation on how American soldiers in Iraq are both traumatized by the situation there and at the same time some of them are committing atrocities against civilians. You need to read it to really grasp all the consequences of our unnecessary and horrific decision to invade Iraq to "liberate" and "democratize" them against their will. Do we blame the soldiers or first blame the criminals in office who sent them there and then botched their mission by typical bureaucratic mismanagement and political lie-mongering?

Everything else I was thinking about came to a standstill when I read these articles. We are sitting here in comfort while on the other side of the world is hell on earth - made in the USA, planned and executed from the remote control comfort of America - Island America - nole mi tangere.

The Other Holy Land

Bridgethought of the Day: Excerpts from Bridgebuilding 101 - 1) First, there must be agreement that a bridge even be built; 2) Second, there must be consideration for equal traffic access for both sides, which means there must also be somewhere to go once the other side is reached; and 3) The point is to bring the two sides together, not to showcase the superiority of one side over another. Then we have an excerpt from Warmaking 101 - you need bridges to transport materials and resources to your side. So even in war, it might not be a good idea to tear bridges down. Tell that to the war engineers...

Meanwhile, things will only get worse as long as only one side gets heard and the other side gets the shaft. Take, for example, the Israel-Palestine conflict. The U.S. has taken a side. The entire U.S. political system has not only taken that side, but fully integrated it into the power-brokerage of both parties. Hence, a trip to Israel is seen as a political "rite of passage" for any political candidate. In Florida, the popular Governor Charlie Crist is ready for his Israel trip, and the waiting list for people to go along is predictably long and impressive. A Miami columnist dutifully notes the political implications - it can only be good for clout, Mr. Crist. And this is nothing new. An unnamed former member of the House from an unnamed Western state told me years ago that nobody, but nobody, can stay in office without being For Israel, and back off any appearance of sympathy of any kind for that Pariah, the Palestinians.

This has nothing to do with 9-11. It is a decision and a policy put in place since Israel was formed as a nation, and it is not subject to question, inquiry or change. America's support for Israel is institutional, and the converse is true: America's rejection of the Palestinian people is challenged only by careful rhetoric whose intention is to mask what it is doing. But the reality is extremely clear: Israel's enemies are our enemies. Even if it means starving them to death. We've become very accustomed to starving children and oppressed populations. All you do is change the channel. You don't listen to the other side.

Look at what happened in Lebanon. Condi Rice was cool with the slaughter of innocent Lebanese citizens. It wasn't even an "Islamist" or "War on Terror" issue. It was just because Israel decided that Hezbollah were their enemies, and this was the time to eliminate them, and the only way to do that is to eliminate everyone in the same country. Condi need only ask, "Who authorized this slaughter?" The answer: "Israel." "Oh, then, it's cool with me." Any other answer would be political suicide. And political suicide is against America's religion.

Now Israel is busy bulldozing and mowing down families again. But this time they have company. The Palestinians have begun to factionalize, then kill each other. Why?

Taghreed El-Khodary 36, journalist, said:

... a woman called Hoda, 60-years old, who was very afraid to mention
her last name, afraid she will be killed by either Fatah or Hamas, said to me:
"When Israel attacks, we can deal with it. Israel is our enemy. Therefore, we
have the will and it's a challenge. But when Palestinians are clashing, its very
frustrating and depressing, psychologically speaking." Someone else, a Fatah
member whose brother was injured in the clashes, said: "What's happening
between Palestinians is due to the embargo imposed by the international community. Once you starve people they become vulnerable and easily manipulated by both parties to serve their personal interests."

We are talking about people under siege, starved, having had their elected officials kidnapped, killed, imprisoned, and their own families deprived from a means of making a living. But we are institutionally prohibited from even thinking about their plight. They are given a very bad P.R. job, presumably someone's idea of hell. Not strange, really, that an advertising-driven society should feel that "give 'em hell" means "give 'em bad P.R." And it almost worked. After all, did anybody ask, or even think about, what kind of logic could be behind an embargo against the weaker of two warring parties? It's OK to talk about other kinds of human suffering, but not the kind that runs smack into U.S. foreign policy. Not the kind we are responsible about.

Therefore, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright was cool with the death of Iraqi children, because they were "collateral damage", a necessary evil, apparently, in her greater scheme of things. In those days the only one brave enough to speak out against Iraq War I, or against the sanctions, was the late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who gave a moving speech at the time that no one was up to listening to. Truth is OK as a source for jokes, but not for serious debate, let alone policy-making. Nobody took to the streets rioting about the lies that led to Iraq War II either. Some voices are heard, yes, but no out-n-out pressure. All the pressure has been from talk radio, from folks who think The Mexicans are coming to take our culture away. Yes, their voices have been heard. Criminalize immigration, they say. What we need is a Great Wall!

In all fairness, shouldn't we let Don Imus work the fields in Texas for a few weeks? Or better yet, let my personal favorite, Ann "The Witch" Coulter work only one month picking grapes in California - in migrant worker conditions. James Michener, where are you now that we need you? Or if that's too tough, let her work as a maid in a hotel - even better, in one of those "new" detention centers they've built for illegals. Then, and only then, would she deserve the right to wear a blindfold and pose as Justice for reporters. Till then, she's just another corrupt lawyer.

If you like to be different, break from the mold, in a way other than dancing idiotically to an iPod or mouthing Steve Jobs slogans, try reading the blog Raising Yousuf, written by a Palestinian mother describing her day-to-day life in Palestine. Try to see what the news cannot ever show.

Of course, there are many voices, one of a shopkeeper in the Al-Jazeera report referenced above:

What brought this all to fruition was the global and Israeli sieges on Gaza, and the resulting unemployment and lack of wages. That, in addition to the US's military and financial support of Fatah militias - this has an enormous role. We want them to lift the siege. We want them to begin speaking with our government, Hamas included.

He was referring to the Hamas-Fatah fighting, of course, but did not lose sight of those who are pulling the puppet strings.

Or the voice of Hadeel Abo Dayya, 17 , high school student,

We know that the president's office can stop this, but he prefers not to. We
were asking for just 30 minutes ceasefire to allow us and the other trapped
bystanders to evacuate, but they wouldn't even give us that. Now, after this
happened, after I thought I was going to die, after I saw that even ambulances
weren't allowed to reach us, I thought: what is this nation, these people, that
I am working so hard to build? I am crushed. But then I thought; how will the
outside world help me? I have to stay strong and persevere. What I learned is
that the world is like a pencil. Your memory, your life, everything you know or think you know, can be erased in an instant. My passport, our ID cars,
everything is gone now in that fire.

Another take on the "infighting" being really a new tactic of enemies, leading me to wonder about Iraq's much-touted Sunni-Shia conflict. I know many could buy this line, but who fed it to Iraq in the first place? Al-Qaeda? Or the Bush Administration? Or Both, working, as it were, in a strange macabre concert...

And finally, but not least, the voice of Mohammad Salim, 45, unemployed/part-time custodial worker,

The first reason behind this all is the siege and the lack of work and lack
of money. If there is money and work, people won't have time for this nonsense,
and likewise parents can prevent their kids from going out and fighting.
Sometimes I feel the young boys, they are bored and looking for something to do,
so they go out and fight.

Why won't Israel just let us work, just let us live?
There won't be any problems in Gaza then. Not a single person would allow his
children to work in the Palestinian Authority security forces or tanzim then.
For a measly 1,200 shekels they destroy everything.

If they lift the siege, people can begin to feel more of a sense of safety and security. On top of that, 450 of the presidential guards were trained in Egypt with US and Israeli funding - this is good for no one. In days past, they forced women with niqab [face covering] and men with beards to the ground. They executed three men. This has never happened before.

Four or five men in my neighbourhood who have beards shaved them off for fear of being targeted. I stopped going to the mosque in recent days. Who will take care of my kids if some crazy gunman shoots me? We are human beings and we just want to live like the rest of the world. My son, he sometimes watches television stations like Abu Dhabi or Dubai; he sees playgrounds and parks with green grass. And I feel so sad and helpless for him.
This occupation has turned us into beggars. Every last one of us - from Abu
Mazen down to street cleaners like me, on top of all this infighting. I'm
embarrassed to be sweeping the streets, I really am. But what can I do? I have
13 mouths to feed. And debts are piling up. And even then, it's a temporary work
relief programme. In two weeks, I'll be out of a job again.

Are we really proud of this legacy resulting from our great leaders and foreign policy? When will we stop depriving an entire population of freedom, means of survival, and infrastructure, and then blame them for it? Do we hold them responsible for the actions of neighbors or family members over whom they have no control?

We blame them when some guys go nuts and try to blow people up in public places, mostly without much success. But no one points the finger at Israel when they mow down whole families or their homes, when they kidnap or kill elected officials, or when they deprive an entire population of adequate means of living? All that is supposedly justified. But it's not justified to be angry when your whole means of living, your home, your people, your family are brutalized to make way for the "Chosen People".

What a callous form of insidious anti-Semitism it is indeed to say that to speak out for Palestinian human rights is anti-Jewish. What kind of Jew would want to be associated with oppression, racism and brutality? Please, IPAC, give us all a break!

When will one honest man actually take a trip to the "Other Holy Land" and try to present the side of the oppressed, instead of the side of the rich, powerful, and apparently...heartless...???

Winning the War in Iraq: Not only Doable, It's Done!

A vote is before the Iraqi Parliament, such as it stands, or ducks, as the case may be. Between the bullets whizzing past legislator(s), and the hand grenades and passing suicide bombers that lawmakers have to deal with, another volley is stealthily pulled right under their noses: the Oil Law! It gives 70% of oil revenues not to the Iraqi People as the administration promised us, but to, you guessed it, Dick & Georgie's cause celebre, Big Oil Conglomerates! Once passed, and the dedicated al-Maliki has assured us that he will do everything in his power - within his specified 3/4 acre - to see that it passes - then "we", represented by Big Oil Conglomerates, posing as flag-draped "U.S. Interests", will have won! So every death, every disfiguration, every maimed young man and woman in the prime of their lives, every orphaned child, will have been worth it!

So already sinfully-rich and bloated Monoliths like Big Oil can rake in the black gold for their personal gain, and the people in Iraq can go back to the business of being hungry, having no infrastructure, having all their national treasures and antiquities destroyed and razed and burned, having no services, electricity, or potable water, and watching their children being blown apart in the education and commerce-free streets run by armed gunmen killing each other for centuries-old grudges that serve no purpose but self-destruction and the elimination of decent people. In other words, it's a victory for greed, a defeat for human beings. And we can use it all to run our cars and our economy. USA! USA! USA! But what would old Tom Jefferson say? Who the hell cares - we live for today!

And how could they convince Mr. al-Maliki to sign away his nation's resources like that? Simple:

Dear Mr. Al-Maliki:

We, the Superpower Oil Conglomerates, might actually deign to pursue the thought of actually investing in your lowlife, devastated, terror-ridden Economy, even though such Conglomerates are actually hardly interested in your lucrative worldclass oil fields, as we are actually extremely Busy doing Much More Important Things and driving Ferraris instead of armored vehicles, but well, if you agree to give us the mere pittance of 70% of your revenues so you can starve your people in a world class show of sincerity to the Masters of the Universe, then we, in a moment of rare largesse, may invest in your pariah economy, and even in those oilfields, and at the same time, maybe, just maybe, we will change our minds about blowing every last bit of infrastructure into a billion pieces.

Of course, if you ever get the idea that we actually NEED and WANT DESPERATELY to use those oilfields, we will use all the power at our disposal - care for a taste? oh, you already had some, did you? - to show you that we want it, but on OUR TERMS. And don't you DARE think to offer a stake to anyone else in this Universe, other than the Masters. You know who I mean. Bro.

The Meddler on the Roof

"Hey, Chicken Little, I'm the guy with the fiddle! Hey, Cow, jump over the moon!"

O Great Oracle, what next? O Great Wizard, tell me, tell me do, over what line must I step?
"Lo, every border of every nation is a line. And the sensibilities of every people form a line. You must step over every line and every crack. Remember: step on a line, break your mother's spine; step on a crack, break your mother's back. You can't step back - so you must step over."
Thus spake the artificial voice of Henrathustra.

Deep within that eminent throat, somewhere between the brooding or quizzical eyes, lies the answer to Our Quagmire. Dr. K, author of the brilliant Theory of Vietnamic Victory, now spews more visionary dementia.

"It's not rotten - it's just overripe!" and "Iraq by any other name would pull as hard" and "When the going goes quicksand, the tough stay the course." Or sink the course, as the case may be.
From the annals of oil-soaked governmental underestimation to the hard-nosed rule of One Grim Hombre (aka Don "The Reaper"), to the plan-a-victory-party-first, fight-the-war-later-whatever Illusionist Lovefest, to the bloody streets of the Red Zone, to the hearts and minds of uninformed, backward, out-of-the-loop folks who inexplicably believe that an invasion is an invasion - what's up with that? - yes, the Bush Administration is ready for some good Mood Music!

And what better music-meister than the Grandmeister of 'em all, Henrathustra. Always the Meddle-man, getting his Wise Old Fingers on every fiddle, every Republican Club Sandwich, every Let's Defy Doomsday Pie. Bush II is all ears when it comes to the Meddle of the Road.
"Hands on!" He says. "Victory Is Near!" He says. "Death to Fascists!" He says.

And when the world reels in horror at the brazen insanity of it all, the K-Meister soothes those tense nerves and that shaken conscience with a time-tested refrain, "God is on your side. If you change your mind, everything you've done will be destroyed, and you will be shamed as a liar! You know we're right! They are the evil ones! We live a purpose-driven life, and our purpose is to meddle! When the going gets dead-end, the tough cross lines..."

Thus spake Henrathustra. "And if you're not up with that, I've got three words for ya .. Kiss my thustra!"

Well, frankly, who can argue with that? So the Grandmeister got Bush II's ears and the country's hemmorhaging red and green in a whoop-de-doo hot wing BBQ beer-keggin' Bash for Freedom where a visionary screen shows would-be terrorists NOT using the invasion of Iraq as the Mother of All Recruiting Tools (with even a real life battleground auto-start to use), but instead predicts they will suddenly be overcome with the smell of ol' BBQ pork ribs and convert to the religion of Playboy, beer and Big Screen TV. Instead of hearing Qur'an recitation, you'll find Kenny Chesney singing "She thinks my tank's sexy".

Yes, and what a realistic vision! At a cost equivalent to what it costs to run a Whirlpool dishwasher per day, we'll save Iraq from its citizens who are Dangerous Arabs that Probably Pray to Mecca and, most importantly, they Don't Love Israel as Israel Should be Loved. Ach! Well, OK, so the dishwasher is supposed to run in the Kuiper belt and we have to finance three missions to "Xena", that cute planetette next to Pluto. So the cost is astronomical. So shoot me.
But no! Behold! The whole world knows the K-Meister is a genius.

O, K-Oracle, tell us how to swim the backstroke in quicksand.

"Do it while being pulled out by a giant crane."

And where or what, pray tell, is this giant crane?

"Behold! The might of the American military is more powerful than a crane. Lo, it shall come to pass that we shall be victorious and our armies shall conquer their armies, and..."

But they don't even have an army! This is just a bunch of insurgents and terrorists and factions killing each other and we're caught in the middle!

"Did you say meddle?"

No, I said MIDDLE.

"Lo, my brethren, they are one and the same. Let's meddle in the Middle East and call it the middle of the meddling road, where victory is ..."

A muddle?

"No! We know what we're doing, and it's crystal ball clear that if you don't send more bodies now, we will look weak, and WE are a SUPERPOWER and THEY are not - therefore they must be shown to lose at all costs."

But what if we can't afford it? What if the American people don't want to send more bodies into a quagmire?

"Lo, I ask you, who is the Commander-in-Chief? The American people? And who is the Cash Cow? The Commander-in-Chief? Enough talk! Biased liberal media! We need action now! Stop thinking, dammit!"

Thus spake Henrathustra. And if you don't agree, you can kiss his thustra. And if you wonder why he's on the roof of the white house, well, you know how oracles hate drowning in mud. He's clean, pristine, and fairly mean - but Bush is up to his neck in muck...

"If I were a bitch, man... ta da dadadadadadadadadadadadadahhh....if I were a stealthy man!..."

Yes, and you can hear this mood music in the RNC's lobby - but please wear boots! And carry a big life jacket...