$600 billion

$600 billion. Sound big? (To help put that number in perspective, the federal deficit is $400+ billion). What does this number relate to? Try the estimated cost of the Iraq situation by the time 2010 comes rolling around (which is just five years away, for those not counting).

Yet this number is just a rough approximation. After all, recall the promises that the war would pay for itself in Iraqi petro dollars. So I think it's fair to say the Iraq situation could cost between $600 bil. and $1 trillion by 2010. If the right-wingers argue this point, they don't have a leg to stand on.

Which comes to my main point (below). I'll likely get some lame response from wingnut-ville along the lines of "aren't free Iraqis worth every penny?" Look, I'm tired of hearing this crap from the same folks who truly don't give a rat's ass about the misfortune of many people in the world, much less to have to pay for the cure(s) with their tax dollars. The incredible hypocrisy here is simply outrageous.

The depths of partisan idiocy at play is mind-boggling. An easy test: just imagine if Clinton were still in office, running the show (I know, I know, impossible for him to govern this badly, I said use your imagination) -- oh yeah, I'm sure the right wingnuts would be making the same lame supportive excuses for this occupation. Hah! They'd be absolutely ballistic!! To think they'd be offering their proud support for President Clinton as he rang the federal cash register, demanding $600 bil. to $1 trillion from the American public to fund the war he pushed through based on dubious and fudged intelligence. You have to be smoking some mighty fine drugs to believe that horsesh*t!

Quite the contrary, if they were demanding impeachment for lies about a BJ, what in the hell would they be demanding now? $600 billion, nearly 1700 dead U.S. soldiers, and tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians -- compared to cheating with a young intern.

Also, imagine if any president proposed to the American people that he/she planned to spend $600+ billion of their money to pay for anything over the next five years. You can be damn certain there would be an outcry for iron-clad intel to prove the case for this immense dollar outlay. As it is this (USA) country's infrastructure is falling apart, getting a "D" and requiring over $1 trillion in upgrades. I betcha the right-wingers would be crowing about this fact -- among many others -- if it weren't for one of their own responsible for and caught up in this horrible debacle.

Even if Iraq were to become the greatest democracy on the planet in the next five years, it doesn't change the above. The final outcome is not the point. We could throw $600+ bil. at many problems in the world and with that kind of money, we'd likely score a few huge victories (uh, like fix a good many of our roads and bridges, for one). Again, not the point. Instead, we live in such a stridently partisan time that most of us don't even notice how much things have changed since those days of spurious impeachment hearings (televised, no less).

Again, just imagine everything about Iraq -- the cost, the lead-up, the intel, the screw-ups -- everything, and then imagine a Bill Clinton in the White House. What would DeLay, Frist, and the rest of the GOP have done during this time? How about the "liberal" media, they would've "behaved" like they did with Whitewater, correct? What about the Limbaughs, Hannitys, and O'Reillys? Oh yeah, they would've fully supported their national leader and applauded the $600+ billion "investment."

As I've said many times before, this country needs to wake up, and soon. We've become a nation of brainwashed zombies, seeming to lack any ability to truly think or to process what's really going on and to then muster appropriate reactions.

Only two publications seem to matter these days: the Bible and the TV Guide. It's exactly the way the Republicans want it.