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Five years and hundreds of lies later, here we are. Approaching 4,000 American lives lost. Up to 100,000 estimated wounded Americans. 1,189, 173 Iraqi deaths. Millions of Iraqis displaced. A civil war. Al Qaeda IS in Iraq now. A demolished infrastructure. A broken U.S. military. No sign of reconciliation in sight. A majority of Americans want our troops out of Iraq. A majority of Iraqis want our troops out of Iraq. In my mind, the greatest cost of this occupation has been the dead and wounded. You can’t put a price on life. You can’t put a price on body parts or mental health.

Financially, the cost of this occupation to U.S. taxpayers is astronomical. And it’s hitting home in a hard way, for so many American families. What could this money have done for us at home?

Free gas for every American for 1.2 years.

2,949 Newton High Schools

Just 1/6 of the money would convert every American car to ethanol.

14.5 Million free rides at Harvard in one year.

Medicare benefits for one year

$54 billion a year would eliminate starvation and malnutrition globally by 2015

$456 billion cost of the war could have fed and educated the world’s poor for five and a half years.

More about what the money spent in Iraq could do at home here, here, and here.

How many children in the U.S. will go to bed hungry tonight? How many children in the U.S. were sick today and their parents couldn’t afford to take them to the doctor? How many veterans will sleep on the streets tonight? How many people across America will be sleeping in shelters tonight because they can’t find affordable housing? How many children don’t have the tools they need to do well in school? How many kids can’t afford a college education? But most importantly, how many more of our soldiers and their families will have to suffer the consequences of this failure called the Iraq War?

Clearly we’ve been taken off track. We’ve neglected to take care of our own citizens, our own infrastructure, our own security, our own veterans, our needy, our elderly….. at the insistence of the Bush administration to keep up this illegal occupation in Iraq. The patients are running the asylum. Lies took us into Iraq. It was a horrible decision to go in. It would be a horrible decision to stay. We’ve been lied to all along the way. And the lies continue.

Dick Cheney this week in Iraq, still trying to tie together 9/11 and Saddam Hussein:

“This long-term struggle became urgent on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 . That day we clearly saw that dangers can gather far from our own shores and find us right there at home. “So the United States made a decision: to hunt down the evil of terrorism and kill it where it grows, to hold the supporters of terror to account and to confront regimes that harbor terrorists and threaten the peace,” Cheney said. “Understanding all the dangers of this new era, we have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 square miles to become a staging area for further attacks against Americans.”

George Bush yesterday:

President Bush says he has no doubts about launching the unpopular war in Iraq despite the “high cost in lives and treasure,” arguing that retreat now would embolden Iran and provide al-Qaida with money for weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States.
“The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable, yet some in Washington still call for
retreat,” the president said. “War critics can no longer credibly argue that we are losing in Iraq, so now they argue the war costs too much. In recent months, we have heard exaggerated estimates of the costs of this war.

Successful? To whom? Halliburton? KBR? Blackwater? Your buddies? Who? Surely not the Iraqis. Surely not Americans. Enough of the lies already! It’s time to end this enormous failure of yours and bring our troops home.

Please take a lookie here for a list of all the blogs participating in this blogswarm. I’m sure there will be some excellent reads.