looks like I left just in time....

Just a passage, but it says a lot;



AP) - Nearly nine in 10 Americans say it's important to know presidential and congressional candidates' positions on open government, but three out of four view the federal government as secretive, according to a survey released Sunday.


This is a legitimate concern, and even though some people have always felt this way, the staggering numbers you see today are directly related to Bush.

Of course congress ok'd the war, but their decision was based upon deceptions and lies.

Premeditated deceptions and lies told by the Bush administration.
I keep hearing the argument that Congress authorized the invasion and war in Iraq, but with that decision being based on premeditated lies and deceptions their hands are clean. The entire fiasco lies at the feet of the current Administration. It can not be blamed anywhere else.

Nor can the staggering numbers of Americans who have lost faith in the truthfulness of government officials.

The Bush Administration has done more damage to this country in 8 yrs, than Al Quieda could have done in 50 yrs!!

As we approach the five-year anniversary of the initial March 20, 2003, "shock and awe" aerial assault on Baghdad, it is worth noting an important shift in the accounting of the conflict's cost.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, puts an eye-grabbing, ultimate bottom line on the seemingly endless U.S. commitment to Iraq: at least $3 trillion. That's trillion, with a "T."
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If we hadnt invaded Iraq;

A trio of University of Chicago economists sought to estimate the cost of containing Hussein pegged the cost at $700 billion over an unspecified period of years.

That estimate figures in the extra U.S. military equipment and manpower that would have been needed to keep Saddam within his borders and keep his hands off Kuwait. It includes the cost of weapons inspection programs, of economic boycotts, of oil that would remain in the ground, and a rate of premature Iraqi deaths ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 per year, based on Saddam's bloody track record and mismanagement of the country.
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Stiglitz;

The cost of 4,000 American troops' lives runs to roughly $28 billion. War outlays have added $1 trillion to the national debt, and could run to $2 trillion over time.

The staggering, long-term toll of veterans' health care, disability benefits and Social Security disability pay. Add them up, and even in a best-case scenario they amount to $371 billion.

"Obviously, after Pearl Harbor, you wouldn't sit down and say, `How are we going to respond?''' Stiglitz said. "But this was a war of choice. We didn't have to go to war. We had a choice of timing, and a choice of whether to go to war at all."

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The debate is not purely among economists, obviously. But even among political scientists who supported the war, Stiglitz's view is starting to take hold.

Michael O'Hanlon, a security expert at the Brookings Institution who runs a project that compiles all manner of data on present-day Iraq _ from military and civilian deaths to commodity costs to public opinion _ said he cannot ignore the negatives: a huge increase in violence in Iraq, the lack of political stability, the inability to find weapons of mass destruction and oil prices at $110 a barrel. (The surge is working. Remember?)


Putting a final fiscal argument to the test, Stiglitz invokes a tenet of economics that is hammered home at the University of Chicago business school itself: The fallacy of the "sunk cost."

People throw good money after bad, in hopes of recovering what they first invested, even though every new dollar just perpetuates a lost cause.

Five years into the war, Americans must decide whether we are caught up in a sunk-cost fallacy.

Five years into the war, Americans must decide whether we are caught up in a sunk-cost fallacy. But in this case, the cost is not counted just in dollars and cents. It is tallied in the impact on American security, and in the cost of American and Iraqi lives.

This is a very good article, backed by a very reliable source.

I say quit throwing money at the problem.......
Iraq is not spending any of their money on the war. They arent reimbursing us one Canadian nickle, while our economy is falling apart at the seams and our brave young men are dying!!

Get out, like- 4 yrs ago!

ahhhhhhhhh fanta......but our canadian nickle is worth $1.05 american!!!

i never understood this from the posters that are guilty of acting such as you. why even say anything at all if all you'll say is "cut and paste"?

fanta......Im going to the bank tomorrow!!!

do you really think congress didn't know better? You see this is a ploy used by democrats to place all the responsibility on a republican's head. Come on guys. Our government is at political war 24/7. They want job security and more importantly...more power. bush, by himself could not possible decieve congress, our people, and the governments of dozens and dozens of other countries. It looks like the dems are winning the political wars right now because they are successfully pinning all the blame on Bush. Republicans do the same thing. Congress, even if they didn't know better, should have done investigating in the matter. They need to have their own opinion. So instead of passing bills that give themselves a 35,000 dollar a year raise maybe they'd better do their homework. Or maybe, just maybe, some people in our governments really felt Saddam was a threat. (I realize that there are people that had their own agendas on this conflict regardless)

Oh yeah, FYI. if there weren't so many hands in the cookie jar then why hasn't bush been tried and convicted of any of this. Congress has the power to do this. And don't say it's because so many people are "brainwashed" because that is a desperate attempt at maintaining an argument.

it's ok. we'll eventually recover from our prez and his blunders, canadians will still be canadians

Thank gawd for that!!!

agreed

Oh yeah, FYI. if there weren't so many hands in the cookie jar then why hasn't bush been tried and convicted of any of this. Congress has the power to do this. And don't say it's because so many people are "brainwashed" because that is a desperate attempt at maintaining an argument.

Do you remember Watergate and the years following Watergate!!


I have heard, coresponding with politicians as I do, that theyy will prosecute Bush and Co., but it will be after he leaves office!!
The real question is,
How much evidence will they destroy before then? ie. CIA Waterboarding tapes, Republican e-mails, etc...

Good one, ,,,,
and TRUE!!!

impeachment.......can you say impeachment??? can you say mafia??? can you say cia......fbi.....pta..........and the xfiles all in the same sentence?

The CIA, following an FBI directive initiated by the PTA, gave Bush a Mafia enema in his Im-Peach-ment!!

Now,
Can I have a Canadian Nickle???

Very good grasshoppa!!! Do you take pennies??

American or Canadian??