Five year anniversary.
3,983 American dead.
At least 29,385 American wounded, which does not count thousands of serious cases of brain injuries.
Half a trillion dollars (Only World War II has cost more in constant dollars). The original projection was of a cost of 50 to 60 billion dollars. Cost to provide health insurance to 4 million American children: 35 billion over a five year time span.
Backlog of veterans awaiting VA approval of disability payments as of August, 2007: 400,000-600,000.
Estimates of approximately 35,000 to 1 million Iraqi deaths, although no numbers are kept or sought.
"Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn
but the sword of righteousness,
no strength known but the strength of love:
So mightily spread abroad your Spirit,
that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace,
as children of one Father;
to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen."
BCP, p. 815.
(Cross-posted at Tradition, Faith, and Reason.)
Labels: Iraq
posted by "Ms. Cornelius" @ 3:15 PM
9 Comments:
It makes me weep and tremble in rage at the same time.
What good, exactly, has come of this?
Thanks for posting this.
Your post puts things into perspective. Thanks.
Your post is right on yet the war seems endless. It makes no sense to continue, yet we do. I can't see that anything is being accomplished.
This comment has been removed by the author.
This war is so pointless . . .
I honestly don't know how our lovely President sleeps at night.
I believe that President Bush exists within the confines of his own warped reality. Thus the reason he sleeps at night.
How many more days?
Over 3,000 murdered on 9/11.
Around 45,000 casualties in the battle of Gettysburg alone.
When will it be over? When the enemy is defeated and will dare not attack us again. Leaving Vietnam with our tails between our legs, then leaving millions to be murdered by the heros of the liberals is what led, eventually, to 9/11. Showing the world that we are, in fact, cowards who moan and wring our hands will do nothing but lead to more deaths.
These are lessons history teaches us. Some, alas, are incapable of learning from the past, to judge from some of the comments here.
Ah, rwp, my love, it's really good to see you!
We have allowed THIS war, against someone who, while vile, was not the cause of any attack upon us, to distract us from prosecuting the war against people who DID attack us, for reasons that were trumped up.
And in doing so, we have prodded more people into the camp of the enemy and created more terrorists.
The way to "spread democracy" (now that that's our goal instead of searching for invisible weapons of mass destruction) is not to enrage the people we have to hope would eventually have the ability to elect a government. Democracy means that the people get to choose, and they may choose something that would be hostile to us.
That's what happened in Iran in 1953, when agents of the US and British governments overthrew a democratically elected government of socialists in favor of a dictator/king who was hated by the people, causing them to resent us even more.... Not to mention our bungling support of Jiang Jeshi or of Diem in Vietnam or on and on. Or our support of Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran in 1980-1988, or our support of Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in 1979. Ah, irony!
Remember, Vietnam started out from the rationalization of the Domino Theory's "It's better to fight them over there than here," too.
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