Let’s Turn Our Backs On Warring Attitudes

Ron Paul states we might have to get used to the idea of an Iran with nuclear power. Well, duh. I mean short of going in and taking away their nuclear capability what else are we going to do?

He points out that our current policies actually encourage Iran to pursue nukes. I agree, but the fault doesn’t lie only with the U.S. It’s basic human nature that when you don’t get along with your neighbor, who has the ability to wipe out your entire existence, you take action to defend yourself. Your choices are, you develop an equally powerful ability to wipe out his existence or you talk out your differences like the evolved and civilized adults we like to think we are.

It’s very clear that the method of sanctions the world community used in an attempt to prevent Iran from building nuclear power failed. It’s equally clear that given the history of animosity between Iran and the U.S. that Iran feels with 100% certainty that they need to defend itself. In this regard is where I agree with Ron Paul.

This mad cycle of one-upmanship of pursuing more threatening weapons than the other guy is foolish, childish and so preventable.

Thomas Jefferson: “The more you use your power the less you have.”

Do these words sound like those of anyone in power today. No. Why has America and, as a result, the world community, ‘progressed’ to the point that we view military power as the desired measure of security?

The U.S. has the attitude “You other nation’s live peacefully our we will kill you.”

Religious zealots follow the conviction “You believe as we do or we will kill you.”

Does any of this make any sense when we consider that every person on this planet wants to survive? A very small number of people within the world population subscribe to chaos for whatever reason, these people should be identified and locked away where they cannot do any harm. Other than that there is no sane reason why the any nation should direct its financial resources to the act of killing as opposed to the act of nurturing its fellow citizens.

The sooner the entire world adopts the idea that no one needs to ‘rule’ over anyone just for the sake of political power the better off this world ‘community’ will be.

Stop throwing money at destruction and start throwing it at more constructive purposes such as feeding the hungry, curing diseases, and education.

Oh, and how about stop idolizing individual financial wealth. Once we adopt the idea that we are all working towards the improvement of our one community and that every single person must contribute we will all be wealthier for it.

True cost of Iraq War

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has calculated the total cost of the first four years of the Bush/Cheney illegal war on Iraq. Their lies and schemes cost American taxpayers $720 million per day. This figure takes into account interest on the war debt and long-term care for the wounded.

The American Friends Service Committee has analyzed what America could buy with only a single day's worth of the money we're spending on this mightmare. For $720 million, we could:

* Provide health coverage for a year for 424,000 children.

* Build 84 brand new schools.

* Buy school lunches for a year for 1.2 million needy kids.

* Provide 6,482 units of affordable housing.

* Pay for a year of renewable-energy electricity in 1.3 million homes.

* Pay the annual salaries of 12,500 new classroom teachers.

* Put 35,000 students through a 4-year state college.

Any of these could be had for just one day of war funding. One week of spending at this rate would pay for every item on this list.

As if the money alone isn’t atrocious enough, as of March 4, 2008 we have lost 3,974 of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors so that Bush, Cheney and their cronies in the military industrial complex and the new military intelligence complex could bolster their financial bottom line.

Iraqi citizens, who only pleaded for help in removing Saddam Hussein and his tyrannical family from power, has paid for this ‘service’ with over 38,000 of their fellow neighbors lives. Over 2.5 million have been forced out of neighborhoods that they will never be able to move back into. Jobs and careers have been unalterably changed. The entire social/economic/religious complexion of the entire country and the Middle East has been changed. All because Americans wasteful thirst for more oil and money.

Iraqi citizens are still deprived of adequate water supplies, sewer systems, and electricity in their homes. Do you think maybe they are sorry they ever asked for our help?

All of this is currently going on in a country that never threatened us directly, but since they had oil the U.S. felt ‘obligated’ to move in, ‘just for their own protection’.

I would say that the balance sheet in this ‘we help you, you help us’ scheme is just a bit unbalanced.

How much money are Bush’s buddies making off of us?

From the Boston Globe March 6, 2008

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in Cayman Islands. The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

Need more proof that Bush/Cheney look the other way while their buddies siphon money from U.S. citizens while lining their own pockets?

Halliburton has been accused by the Pentagon of overcharges in the amount of $1.4 billion.

Congress has found that $10 billion has been mismanaged and wasted.

$9 billion of U.S. taxpayers money and $549.7 million in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors remains unaccounted for. Also, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

$1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment provided to the Iraqi security forces is missing.

Pentagon auditors have determined that of the $20 billion paid to Kellogg Brown & Root to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items, $3.2 billion is questionable or unsupportable.

Will anything be done to prosecute or even conduct meaningful investigations into this mismanagement, theft, graft, deceit and lies surrounding this illegal war? No!

Need more proof that George W. Bush and company doesn’t give a damn about the welfare of his fellow citizens? His 2009 budget to Congress will give $515 billion to the Pentagon and slash spending on healthcare programs, Center for Disease Control, low-income energy assistance, and family literacy.

Health, education and welfare continues to take a backseat to military funding. Why? Because there isn’t enough money to be made on health, education and welfare. His fellow citizens mean nothing more to him than warm bodies to put in harms way so he and his buddies can reap billions in profits while our nation’s infrastructure falls into disrepair, our social security program remains underfunded, our healthcare system dies a slow death, and the value of our dollar recedes into oblivion.

Bush’s answer to ease our suffering due to his ruinous economic policies is to throw us a meager bone, in the form of a $300 check, with a grin while telling us that we are free to spend it on whatever we want. Gee, thanks George. This brings to mind Marie Antoinette’s famous line ‘Let them eat cake’ when she learned the peasants had no bread to eat.

And what can we spend this surprise windfall on? Products made by foreign governments so that all of this ‘free’ money goes directly to stimulating their economies. Great plan George! Here’s an idea, how about bringing back some of the New Deal economic recovery plans that Franklin D. Roosevelt put into action to help the country through the depression? Oh, but then, you would have to admit that our economy is not as resilient and fundamentally healthy as you and your cohorts proclaim it to be. If you would just view the exercise as ensuring you had healthy young men and women available for your dirty little war, you just might be willing to try it.

Where does the money go?

How much money does it cost to run this war?

I tried to find out through the internet and this is all I can come up with.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of "prosecuting" a war against Iraq at up to $9 billion per month.

One source, dated March 2006 said it costs at least $200 million a day. That works out to $6 billion per month.

Another source, dated September 2006, put it at nearly $2 billion a week. That works out to $8 billion a month, still in the ballpark.

Another source, dated January 2007, said that we have spent over $1.2 trillion.

That is a staggering amount of money to spend on anything. And what have we gotten for it?

We have had to buy new helicopters, tanks, troop transports, ammunition and weapons to replace that which was destroyed fighting this war. We have bought fuel and maintenance services to keep this equipment running. We have bought food to feed the military and new uniforms to clothe them. We have paid the salaries of support contractors and reservists that normally would not have been needed. We have paid and still are paying to rebuild Iraq.

That is a lot of money to cover these things. I am not convinced that these things actually cost this much.

Nor am I convinced that this was the best use of this money.

It is very easy to hide illegal and inappropriate spending when you are dealing with such a large sum of money. And given the fact that neither George W Bush nor anyone else in the White House can be trusted, I am willing to bet that a lot of illegal spending took place behind closed doors that cost the American ‘tax-donors’ a lot more money than it should have.

I as a taxpayer should be able to learn how much of my money is being spent on this war and where that money is going. I should be able to access more than data that is outdated at best.

Aside from the fact that the U.S. government would never release ‘actual’ figures to someone as lowly as one of the millions who actually supplies the money for this dark-hole, I wouldn’t be able to trust the figures as true.

Let’s take a look at how that money would have been better spent.

We could have funded Social Security for decades.

We could have developed the most complete public health care system in history.

Medical research could very possibly have been years ahead of where it is now.

Countless people’s lives would have been saved in poverty stricken countries around the world if the money had been spent there.

Our education system would have been second to none. Just think of what we could accomplish with the most highly educated people in the world living right here in the U.S.

Parenting programs to teach parents how to raise their children to be more responsible could be funded.

After funding all of these more practical issues, we would have had enough left over to have an extensive national security system that would protect us from the very terrorists that George W Bush says is best fought in Iraq.

The findings of the 9/11 commission were held up due to costs. ‘Costs’ would not have been a valid reason had this illegal war not been started. Recommendations such as better cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation, and a larger force in Afghanistan to stop the Taliban would have been given the green light.

In addition to saving this money for more practical things, we would not have lost over 3,000 military personnel. Medical care for those wounded individuals who made it back will cost us even more and put an even bigger strain on an already over-burdened VA system. And the lost productivity of these killed or wounded soldiers is immeasurable.

This amounts to a colossal mis-use of funds. Our tax dollars are at the command of people who have their priorities all screwed up.