March 18, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

BUSH INCOMPETENCE ON DISPLAY

Bush fans have cited some things they like about the guy. He's the first president with an MBA, for example. He's one of the "grownups in charge." He's "decisive," even to the point of the absurd. I think more accurate descriptions of Bush are: incompetent, lazy, arrogant, and corrupt. Bush made a half-hearted attempt at a speech to reassure the financial sector and Americans in general that things are really hunky-dory in our economy. This column by Gail Collins is at www.nytimes.com:

The president squinched his face and bit his lip and seemed too antsy to stand still. As he searched for the name of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (“the king, uh, the king of Saudi”) and made guy-fun of one of the questioners (“Who picked Gigot?”), you had to wonder what the international financial community makes of a country whose president could show up to talk economics in the middle of a liquidity crisis and kind of flop around the stage as if he was emcee at the Iowa Republican Pig Roast.

We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Suddenly, I recalled a day long ago when my husband worked for a struggling paper full of worried employees and the publisher walked into the newsroom wearing a gorilla suit.


THE FINANCIAL COSTS OF IRAQ

The Bush administration lied to the American people about Iraq on several fronts. We were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which he did not. We were told there was an alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which there was not. We were told the war would be paid for by Iraq's oil revenues, which have not begun to pay for the costs of this war. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said this war will cost three trillion dollars. We have the actual costs of maintaining troops and supplying them in Iraq and we will have the interest to pay on money borrowed to finance the war. We will also have massive amounts of veterans benefits to pay. This war is already the second most expensive in our history. This doesn't even take into account the human costs of the war in deaths, wounds, and psychological damage. This article by Zachary Coile is at www.sfgate.com:

It was supposed to be a quick war and a cheap one. Five years later, 160,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq. And the costs keep piling up - $12 billion every month - putting a strain on an already faltering economy.

The United States has poured more than $500 billion into Iraq, mostly for military operations. But that figure is just a small piece of the much larger bill that taxpayers will pay in the future.

Because the money for the war is being borrowed, interest payments could add another $615 billion. A heavily depleted military will have to be rebuilt at a cost of $280 billion. Disability benefits and health care for Iraq war veterans, many of them severely injured, could add another half-trillion dollars over their lifetime.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University public finance Professor Laura Bilmes, both of whom served in the Clinton administration, have included those calculations in a new study of the war's long-term costs. Their estimate of the war's price tag: $3 trillion.