red onion

Unbelievalbly, a Paul West article in the Baltimore Sun quoted Treasury Secretary John Snow recently as saying "The cost of the war will be a one-time thing". West responds to the statement by saying, "But beyond the cost of the war, estimated at upwards of 100 billion, is the longer-term expense of replacing Hussein and attempting to run Iraq effectively, a subject that Bush also has yet to address in detail but frought with uncertainty."

It is such elementary, and obvious attempts at manipulation for Snow to suggest the cost of the war is a "one-time sort of thing". Does he mean that the war will occur only once? Does he mean that we will only pay for it once? Or does he mean, as West suggests, that the cost of the war is seperate from the cost of helping a country to recover from a war we have waged upon it. Whatever.

This parlour game of semantics dancing is tiresome. Everyone of sound, mind and body knows we are going to be paying for this one for a long time. Especially crucial should be the plight of the millions of refugees this war will create. Based on how we are helping to care for the desperately poor of Afghanistan, made poorer still by our war on the Taliban, I fear for the Iraqi people.

It is also the people of the United States who are going to continue suffering economically as a result of our wars in the world. I noticed it is difficult to get information on the cost of the continuing war in Afghanistan. I am guessing, and if anyone cares to correct me or send additional info, that the war in Afghanistan has cost $30 to $60 billion. And this doesn't include the cost of humanitarian efforts, born by many nations. It is a difficult, accurate information era.

I think it is safe to assume the Bush administration is counting on oil profits from its new empire of the oil fields of Iraq, to pay for this war. One can only wonder how much of the profits earned from the results of this war, will stay with the Iraqi people.

It smells like greed and arrogance. It smells like vain-glorious, religious superiority raised to new heights, to dangerous sociopathology, bordering on psychopathology. The Bush administration is mentally ill, but the patients are running the asylum.