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This week marks the fifth anniversary of shock and awe in Iraq.
Five years of blood - 3,990 U.S. soldiers killed, including two who perished in a midday bomb attack in downtown Baghdad just yesterday, and more than 29,000 seriously wounded.
Five years of treasure - $800 billion officially, including President Bush's pending request for additional tax dollars, and probably closer to a total of $3 trillion, according to Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Five years of shocking failure and awesome incompetence.
It was a year ago that I returned from Iraq, where I had been serving as a civilian. I didn't support the original invasion, but I held out hope that we could help Iraq build the foundation of a democratic system to justify the heartbreaking personal investments of our military families and the financial sacrifice of our taxpayers.
I was wrong.
Neither administration - not the one in Baghdad, not the one back in Washington, D.C. - had the commitment or competence to get the job done.
This week, what we are left with is a holding pattern of continued violence against our soldiers and Iraqi civilians, against our standing in the world, and against our economic well-being, which is now being driven into a deepening recession caused to some significant degree by that can be laid at the feet of the more than $12 billion you and I are already squandering there each month.
Yesterday, George W. Bush issued hollow assurances that he and his administration are doing everything they can to avoid an outright plunge into economic disaster, touting a $30 billion bailout of a prestigious Wall Street bank engineered since last Friday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others.
"I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for working over the weekend," Bush smiled.
He made no mention of the families of the 15 U.S. soldiers who have been killed in Iraq since Sunday, who surely have lost their share of sleep, too. |
