Death and Taxes - What Price Glory?

Discussion
1

Dear Everyone;

Some rainy day commentary.

The BLOG site is from Riverbend in Iraq. She is writing about the personal effect of a visit to the site of a tragedy in Iraq on its 13th anniversary. It is well worth reading for a little insight into Iraq from an Iraqi perspective.

                          http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

After reading the above BLOG consider the following.

The current Bush military operation civilian death toll is now 13,000. 10,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and 3,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan due to military operations. In comparison, the 9/11 and other hostile terrorist attacks since the civilian death toll is 3,500.

There are now 540 GI's killed, some 3,000 wounded, and 20,000 flown out of Iraq for non-combat related reasons, 100 dead coalition soldiers and couple hundred coalition wounded. These are figures only the Grim Reaper can appreciate.

What is the price to US taxpayers? $72 billion for reconstruction and another $50 billion needed for Iraq and Afghanistan. This does not include the funds used for enticing coalition members with various loans, grants and sweetheart deals.

The cost of the military operation also has to be included. Congress authorized $166 Billion. In the months of Sept - Nov. $14 Billion was spent by the Pentagon in Iraq.

What Price Glory? Bush now saying it was all because Saddam had the CAPACITY for WMD.

Isn't time for a regime change?

Ron Getty
SF Libertarian

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On top of that death toll there is perhaps 20-40 thousand Iraqi and Afghani soldiers killed. I find it pretty disturbing that they're often not counted even by US peace activists.

They were people too, and for the most part just defending their country against invading armies.

/Lars

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Dear Lars;

The Iraqi and Afghani soldiers were not left out by omission. Attempts have been made to arrive at some reasonable figure for Iraqi soldiers killed and wounded. The attempts have failed because the Iraqi military record keeping administration fell apart as to which unit was where and how heavily involved they were in combat. But it can be assumed there were at least 10,000 KIA countrywide and 3 - 4 times that WIA.

The only figures released by the US command is some 2,300 Iraqi soldiers KIA in the battle of Baghdad. In the last Iraqi war there were some 10,000 - 20,000 KIA and probably 3 - 4 times those in WIA.

Ron Getty
SF Libertarian

Lars Petrus <lars@...> wrote:
On top of that death toll there is perhaps 20-40 thousand Iraqi and Afghani soldiers killed. I find it pretty disturbing that they're often not counted even by US peace activists.

They were people too, and for the most part just defending their country against invading armies.

/Lars