Rev.Page,The figures you cited are much,much lower than the actual cost of this war because the government makes use of cash accounting rather than acrual accounting.Essentially the government is tallying the annual appropriations and not much else.This is by design--- more smoke and mirrors.

Acrual accounting, on the other hand, takes into account the appropriations for the war ,but it also takes into account future expenses for the war, a much more accurate way to ascertain the true cost.For example,disabled soldiers will have to be cared for for years to come, and very expensive weapons and equipment will have to be replaced( at six to ten times the cost for replacement during peace time).This war has been fought with borrowed money ,so inteerest costs should really.really be taken into account.Three trillion dollars has been suggested as a "conservative" estimate of true and eventual cost of this war.

We also also changing the nature of our fighting forces in very fundamental ways.Instead of establishing a military force designed to counter threats from world powers,we are now directing our efforts into establishing what is essentially a world police force to further a neoconservative agenda which has already proved to be bootless.The end result is that just about every domestic program has been sacrificed and we are less prepared to fight a major war--- something to be very worried about with the resurgence of Russia and China.We will be playing for this colossal blunder for years to come.

Musca

I again will give you the we shouldn't be there thing. I however do not consider the U.S responsable for Iraqis and Iranians killing Iraq's with bombs and such.

I am sure you would agree two wrongs do not make a right. We may be there but we are not making them kill people. There have been many deaths that were caused by soldiers, but all of them cant be blamed on the U.S. If that were true then the African slave traders who sold slaves would be the ones solely responsable for slavers, and I am sure noone feels that way.

Remember defending these people are defending people who have decapitated and tortured American soliers. Were talking things much worse than water boarding!

Thank you Rev. Jane for this thought provoking and heartfelt essay. I can’t help thinking that we had better options for achieving the same goals if we were going to spend this kind of money. If we really wanted to win the hearts of the people in Iraq I imagine that for a fraction of what we have spent we could have improved their lives in numerous ways.

If our goal was to persuade the people of Iraq that our intentions were noble we could have provided services instead of bombs. If we wanted to show them that democracy is a superior system we could have given aid and educational opportunities instead of death and destruction. With the money we spent we could have bribed Saddam Hussein to retire and buy his own ranch in Paraguay next to bush’s or an island in the South Pacific.

The problem of course is that our motives were not noble, we did not want to win the hearts of the Iraqi people we wanted to win their oil, we wanted to occupy their land, we wanted to put military bases on their property. We wanted to expand the American Empire and good intentions are not part of that Empire, I’m afraid.

Evil seems to have certain advantages here on the earth planet. I’ve noticed that evil has a habit of causing problems and then turning around and offering to solve the very problems it has provoked. I saw it happen when Israel’s General Sharon went somewhere and caused an uproar of violence and then got elected Prime Minister due to the fact that he was a General and a warmonger.

The bush administration has repeatedly used this strategy in Iraq. First by saying that they had weapons of mass destruction, which they did have in the form of chemical weapons, though we had provided them when we were friends with Saddam. From there we have instigated all manner of trouble so that we could have the honor of fixing it. We disbanded the Iraqi military, which became the insurgency that only naturally protested our ruining their infrastructure, the looting of their museums and the wholesale bombings of their houses and towns.

We let millions of weapons and billions of dollars funnel into the hands of the people we were then forced to fight. We made Iraq the place to be for al Quida, when before we invaded they had no presence there. We have actively created a state of unrest and division amongst the people of Iraq, all so that we could maintain a justification for our occupancy.

When this obscenity will end no one except God knows but we will be paying for it in many ways for a long time to come, as we should. Evil does not win in the end and we will surly reap the weeds of the seeds that we have sown. It’s time to consider planting better seeds, seeds of love seeds of tolerance seeds of mutual understanding for a start. We are all humans and humans all require pretty much the same things to be happy and productive.

Lets begin to offer to the world what we would like to receive from the world. We need to ask ourselves if we really want the same sort chaos that we have created in Iraq?