While we are all here wondering how we ever got tugged into this war on terror that will never end in our lifetimes, and how we're ever going to pay for it (we won't), the New World Order announced by Gorbachev, Bush's Sr. and Jr., Clinton, and two Popes is moving in inexorably upon us like a blob creeping under the door -- and Common Dreams seems suspiciously unaware. Hmmm.

Yes, the US is bogged down in an endless occupation of Iraq. We have an enormous federal budget deficit. $3.8 trillions are admittedly lost in the Pentagon electronic treasury (Gee, wonder how that happened), we owe more to Chinese, Japanese, and European banks than we or our children can ever pay back (shades of third world syndrome?), and we have a chronic trade deficit with China. All by design. It's all part of the plan to meltdown the US and merge us into the New World Order, a world without boundaries, national governments, or civil rights.

Don't believe it? Check out "US and EU agree 'single market' on BBC News online. And if you're wondering how we got engineered into this "single market" with 99.9% of Americans completely out of the loop, just google the S&PP and other CFR North American Union documents that herald the grand unification of the US with the rest of the world. Then wave our constitutional democracy and Bill of Rights "bye bye." It was nice knowin' ya, America. But most of us are so media-numbed we don't give a d***.

$500 Billion dollars would buy infrastructure that could generate 250 gigawatts of wind power (7% of US electricity consumption)
An amount equal to our national debt would pay for 100% of it, and because the WTO wouldn't allow us to provide free electricity, it would eventually pay for itself. (30 Years, faster if you factor the increasing cost of oil)

500 billion dollars here, 500 billion dollars there, soon it will add up to real money.

I'm curious...have we addressed the reality of Iraq? It's not a war, is it, but rather an invasion and occupation? Civilians in the construction industry who have worked in Iraq the past few years have returned to say that large, permanent American military bases are being constructed there, complete with all the services that Americans are used to: theaters, ballfields, shopping, etc. Wasn't, then, the original idea to occupy Iraq in order to have a strong headquarters from which to manage the oil resources there for the United States? I don't see any way for the administration and its corporate supporters to back down from this intent.

And with our greed for oil, how can we, as citizens, speak to this situation? Look at all the SUVs on the road! Aren't the majority of us supporting the administration and big oil by our own actions?

It's natural that the citizens of Iraq and the whole Middle East would resist the occupiers. Surely we would do the same. But the situation in Iraq was volatile anyway, with many opposing factions, and now the whole thing has degenerated into a bloodbath. And we have given millions of people with nothing to lose some very good reasons for hating us.

So where can we go from here? What would be positive, creative, healing action? I think Dennis Kucinich has some ideas, but I need to study them.

New bumper sticker thinking:

"Support the Troops Buy More Gasoline"

Bush is going to veto the timeline Iraq funding bill and its time America confronts the fact that it is time to veto Bush!!!

Somehow we are supposed to ignore the fact that he lied his butt off to manipulate us into this quagmire and it is long overdue that this quagmire gets chained to Bush's leg. If you are the decider, then we have to tell you face to face that your decision S-U-C-K!!!

What this article is not telling you is that a Nobel prize winning economist as estimated the true cost of the war at over TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. Bush is bankrupting the US on a neo con wet dream invasion.

You gotta ask yourself, how does this administration get away with this kind of spending?
I know, I know, pick me, pick me!
It's called SPIN! Duh!

Therefore the solution is quite simple.

MEDIA REFORM.

MEDIA REFORM is more important then the war on terror. MEDIA REFORM is more important than global warming. It's so simple it's almost clebratory.

adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca

How we're going to pay for it is a good question. Beyond sacrificing what's left of the funding for our safety-net programs, our SSI, our infrastructure and educational system, we are a debtor nation with a steadily sinking dollar and steadily growing economic competitors.

The people that lied us into this situation should sacrifice their considerable fortunes and corporations like Halliburton and its subsidiaries that have robbed the government blind should be forced to pay back their ill-gotten plunder.

Not only will our country be in serious economic difficulty but we owe Iraq considerable compensation for years to come.

On April 29, 2006, comedian Stephen Colbert appeared as the featured entertainer at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, which was held in Washington, D.C.

Colbert took time to harshly criticize the White House Press Corps, who hosted the event, and the media in general. Addressing the audience, he remarked:

"Over the last five years, you people were so good—over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. ... And then you write, 'Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.' First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!

Stephen Colbert then went to satirically but poignantly state that MAIN STREAM MEDIA is DESTROYING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY....

This bitter truth received a chilly, awkward silence and muttering from a stunned audience of Bush insiders.....

James Madison
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended . . . and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people....

U.S. Marine Corps General Smedley Butler
"I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a ~ gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. Made in Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National \ City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

And that doesn't include what we need to pay to vets disabled by the war, assuming the government doesn't welsh out on its obligation to its soldiers. That kind of money could have rebuilt brand new houses for everyone in New Orleans and Mississippi after Katrina.

This article obscures the bigger issue of US militarism and imperialism. The $116 billion (or whatever) we spend on Iraq and Afghanistan is just a fraction of our total military spending, which now surpasses that of the rest of the world combined.

According to the authoritative Center for Defense Information, US military spending in 2007 will be $761.5 billion (this includes the $435.5 military budget, but also Iraq/Afghanistan, nuclear weapons research, veteran's payments and other costs not included in the US "defense budget"). (http://www.cdi.org/PDFs/DMMarApr07.pdf)

We live in a country that has chosen guns over butter, violence over peace, and global domination over co-existence. This society's sickness goes much deeper than the "mistake" of invading Iraq.

It's always amusing to see what we could have bought (education, healthcare, actual security) with our tax money wasted on Iraq and Halliburton, but it's not like it would ever have been spent on such frivolous items without the cost of Bush's war. Improving the human condition, even of one's own subjects, has never been a priority for any government, ours inclded. This goes for whoever's in charge. To restate dfairley via Porky Pig, our society's leaders have buttered our bread with guns and now we can't sleep in it.

Don't pay taxes. Don't pay back your credit lenders. Steal gas whenever possible. Steal from any major corporation whenever possible. It's us versus them. You can live fine w/ a bad "credit rating". If every american borrowed all they could from every bank, we could break their system of slavery, and they won't have access to the billions for their psychotic wars of plunder and death driven by insecurity and greed.

Check out how many news sources don't mention the non-binding aspect of the timetable when they mention that bush plans to veto it:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&ie=UTF-8&q=non-binding+veto&scoring=n&sa=N&start=10

Why do they want to construe their victory in getting more funding this way?

I think they desperately want to give the impression of being held back by the democrats. Which means they know that victory is impossible.

I spoke with an indoctrinated Bushite, and he was going on about how "our boys hands are tied, and blah blah blah" saying they weren't given enough leeway.

It looks like another pathetic attempt to create a media myth of failure because of the defeatist democrats.

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=defeatist&btnG=Search+News

Watch closely, history is being rewritten. It will be "We could have won this war if the democrats had some spine and stopped playing partisan politics"

I have a feeling that,that figure is way lower than what it really is. What a travesty.

Won't work this time, though. All anyone has to do is produce Bush's "major operations are over" aircraft landing footage, along with hundreds of hours of speeches, etc. In the pre-internet era they would possibly have gained more traction with old Orwellian tricks. The war is clearly Bush's to lose, or the People's to stop. I'm not sure what role exists for the Democrats. Someone in D.C. needs to take the blame, act as foil to Bush, provide the illusion of an opposition, etc?

The thing is, even if the Dems want to take blame for the failure of winning Iraq -- they won't get it. Increasingly, people see this as a series of miserable failures:

* A broken voting system (Diebold, winner-take-all, Electoral, etc.)
* A failed energy policy, dependence on fossil fuels, Big Energy in general, monopolization of control over the energy grid, production of energy.
* Failure of corporo-fascism. No such thing as a benevolent fascism. Or a top leader who's not also a carnivore or cannibal at heart.
* Failure of the monarchical system. We had King George I. We didn't really need King George II.
* Failure of a family dynasty? Interesting that Neil Bush was there when an S&L went down, that Bush I was there with Iran/Contra, and that Jeb was there during an "irregular" presidential election that swung in favor of his brother.

And so on. Perhaps the Dems are a shill opposition group, mainly in place to prevent an outright revolution? And then perhaps they'll find something useful to do, and save the Republic. The next 6-12 months will tell all.

A military mom speaks out against the aggressive, underage recruiting done on highschool campuses and other venues

With the escalating human costs of this preemptive War of Choice, the military is giving recruiters a $1,000 bonus per head -- a bounty -- for every new recruit they get to sign the dotted line.

MoveOn and VoteVets.org "felt uncomfortable" with this video.

Have they no shame?

Check out this video and do something about it: http://www.gravel2008.com/?q=node/473

That is just the out of pocket expenses to date. What about what Gregg Palast calls the gasolene tax, the higher costs of gasolene due to the war now and in the future? What about the lost opportunity cost to the economy? What about the cost of treating all the casualties, projected into the future? What is the cost of every lost life, both Iraqi and American? What about the costs of spending everything on destruction rather than sustainable, renewable energy and products that add value to the economy. Even the two trillion estimate may be far too low.

Wet dreams sell, the media sells them everyone makes money off of the suckers, real money. Look at walmart, you'd buy that??? Like a first ave hooker, cheap! Its all oil like the news. Greasing ya'! "I'll spend your money on me, to make money for myself, Cuzz its all about me!" says Bushco as he blows the country a big wet kiss and an amount due notice. All the politicians blush because they all sleep together to keep warm and safe. Worse than a redneck American doctor in asia going home! Kissy Kissy!
The Reagan era new world order has been making a lot of progress if anyone has read it in full, its been a long time... I wonder if anyone could find a copy...

Well said, dfairley.

We can keep nipping around the edges as to what kind of costs there are for this and that, but unless we confront the root cause, the need for dismantling our global economic and military-backed empire (some over 700 military bases in some 130 countries) until then we will make no substantive change in the direction we are going as a nation.

One has to ask, is all this military spending doing for us the things it is supposed to be doing for us:

1) Is it making us friends in the world, friends who work with us as equals and where we coalesce in policy around issues that is good for the nations and peoples involved and brings peace to them?

2) Is it making us safer and promoting a more secure world for the inhabitants of this earth and our nation itself?

3) Is the exhorbitant amount spent on empire more important than procuring the betterment of the lives of people home and abroad in ways that make for a more sustainable earth.

4) Are we sowing seeds that will produce the results we want?

5) Is our drive for power and economic grip over the world and its resources really something that benefits the masses or even the long term survival of our nation?

6) Does our push for empire have any ethical/moral basis, when one considers the death and destruction, the overthrowing of democracies and replacing them with dictatorships or puppet regimes that allow the few in a nation subjugate the many of that nation, the funneling of monies that could be used for positive improvments in the lives of people(s) rather than for lining the coffers of the corporate hegemon, the destruction of the environment, that we have put upon the poor of other nations?

You can add many other things in this list, but the answer to all of them is a resounding "NO!"

We are lemmings running to the precipice with no foresight other than the satisfying of short term greed.

Without a substantive reawakening and pointing in a completely new direction (kind of a metanoia experience of the people, a turning around and seeing things completely differently), we will continue spiralling down a path that leads to creation of more suffering.

How goes the biblical lines? Something like, without vision the people will perish.

It will only change when the people remove the scales from their eyes and demand a new direction--from the bottom up change can happen.

Humanity is at war with itself, at every level of our society and on the global stage, that is the real war of terror. The price in human lives and in dollars we paid so far is nothing, it actually will mean nothing to our children and grand children when they face the burden of our wars, and it is their judgment we will have to face one day and to endure...

Has anyone thought the Republicans may be deliberately spending the federal government into bankruptcy so they can close down Social Security, Medicare and all the other social services they have hated ever since Roosevelt's "New Deal" legislation during the economic Depression of the 1930s? Without our "social safety net" we Americans will be wage slaves for whatever corporations will hire us, in competition with the millions of illegal aliens flooding across the Mexican border. That would be Heaven on Earth for the right-wing Republicans, and it's happening now.

Ah the Republicans - the party of low taxation... The sad thing is that come election time the media will do nothing to highlight that the low tax party is busy running up a trillion dollar tax bill here. And you can pretty much gurantee that the Democrat candidate will say nothing either. It is like 1984 by George Orwell where the people are persuaded that black is in fact white.

Assuming we could avoid the fallout of the actions so far and we could magically stop the war, the cost so far is 500 billion.

The total end of life cycle cost will be trillions.

On the bright side, all these people would have eventually died anyway - 'so wars don't really kill people'. (This is a paraphrase of a right wing nut I saw on TV)

Got a couple of good laughs this morning.
Doc Robert- Support the Troops Buy More Gasoline

And Roger--If impeachment is off the table then it's time for a food fight, Oh yep, and if that doesn't work, move on to the dishes and glassware. If still you can't succeed, the forks and knives.

I think we should put out a bumper sticker which reads:

"Freedom isn't free!
- this sticker cost me $3"

Who? Michael Reagan! He wants his listeners to believe Tenet's "intelligence" led Bush & Co. down the wrong path.

Serious!!!

... and sometimes the peeps on CD can talks sense!

Even if one of you said something about "robbing the government", which is somewhat amusing considering that A. it's stolen money anyway, B. it's certainly not the politician's money and C. a fat "fee" from such payments comes straight back to those that passed the laws and spending bills that spent the stolen money in the first place.

As for the muppet suggesting we steal at every opportunity, hope you get arrested soon (after you've been suitably robbed of course).

It's also the 3rd time I've seen on here notions of "they're doing it on purpose to destroy medicare!". You forget the very nature of what government is, which is a bunch of bandits making hay while the sun shines, they don't give a damn about anything more than a few years down the road.

As long as it's not on their watch, they don't care.

See "Hurricane Katrina" for an example.

Nor are they overly bothered about the cost, because money is just something they print. YOU pay the cost via "inflation", people all over the world pay the cost via that self-same inflation, because the world uses US dollars for reserves.

That may be coming to an end soon though.

BTW, 2 countries that moved away from selling oil in dollars only, are Iraq and Iran. Funny that?

S.

According to data accumulated as of September 2006, special appropriations for the war on Iraq stood at $507 billion. This does not include funds expended directly from the Pentagon budget, various intelligence agencies or post-combat medical care. I doubt we will ever know exactly how much was spent on this war.

http://www.freepublictransit.org