Robert Scheer: America's Empty Pockets

from Truthdig, via The Nation:



truthdig | posted October 24, 2007 (web only)
America's Empty Pockets
Robert Scheer



Robert Scheer is editor of TruthDig, where this essay originally was published.

Hey, a billion here, a billion there, who's counting? Not the State Department, which admitted this week that it can't say "specifically what it received" for the $1.2 billion it paid DynCorp, ostensibly to train the Iraqi police--other than that somebody got an Olympic-size swimming pool out of the deal.

On Monday, President Bush demanded that Congress fork over $46 billion more to pay for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, insisting that it be approved by the end of the year. That brings the total requested this year in "supplementary funds" for his foreign adventures to $196.4 billion, and the prez said Congress had better pony up or it will be betraying the family of the dead Marine that he was using as prop for this particular White House photo op.

Of course the Democrats, after some pussyfooting, will sign off, as they have for the rest of the more than $800 billion that will have been allotted for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts by year's end, lest they be accused of failing the troops that Bush has put in harm's way. "Our men and women on the front lines should not be caught in the middle of partisan disagreements in Washington, D.C.," Bush warned darkly, while edging ever closer to the family of the fallen Marine. "I often hear that war critics oppose my decisions, but still support the troops," he said. "Well, I'll take them at their word--and this is the chance to show it."

I half-expected some leading Democrat to respond: "Hey, you want support for the troops, I'll see your $46 billion and raise you another $46 billion." But then again, Joe Lieberman is no longer running the party. Instead, the Democrats tried to show that $46 billion is not loose change and that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, a mere forty days of the cost of the Iraq war could provide annual health insurance coverage for 10 million American children. Harry Reid added that the money might be better spent for law enforcement, homeland security and fixing the sagging infrastructure, but his argument isn't going to get any better traction than Pelosi's. As Reid pointed out, "this intractable civil war in Iraq ... is being paid for by borrowed money."

Sure, some day the Chinese communists and others holding our debt will have to be paid back with compounded interest, but for now the war has been successfully marketed as a financial freebie. Leave it to the next generation to wake up and discover that this war, which in constant dollars has already cost more than the Korean or Vietnam wars, prevents Congress from implementing any of the needed domestic programs, even those advocated by both parties, as was the children's health insurance bill vetoed by Bush last week. But even if you think none of that domestic spending is needed, even for fixing Medicare and Social Security, the cost of this war will require a substantial increase in taxes over coming decades. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/truthdig

Ever since conservatives began to get their way, circa Ronnie Raygun, the USA has been steadily becoming an unhappier, meaner, poorer, less civilized place to be. The only exception to that were several years under Clinton when things started looking up again, but the conservative republicans spoiled even that upward trend with their hateful impeachment nonsense.

Today, it is evening in America. Everything that was bad is worse. Every problem is bigger. There are fewer hopes, fewer opportunities, less for Americans to be proud of. Our future is bleak and we now have a past to be ashamed of.

The right-wing will blame (they always blame) all that on democrats, of course. But it isn't democrats who have been getting their way for the past 20 years, especially the last seven.

Sad days for my country.

is that this war it thoroughly ILLEGAL -- and has been since its inception . . .

one more time . . . the United States is engaged in an ILLEGAL war of aggression against a sovereign nation -- and the president and the Congress just keep on feeding the monster, with no qualms at all about the fact that we are committing a CRIME of unimaginable proportions in Iraq . . .

how can the Democrats -- or the Republicans, for that matter -- in any way justify more and more funding (money we do NOT have, btw) for an illegal enterprise of such monumental proportions? . . . when the law no longer matters, the nation that was the United States of America is no longer . . .