The Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

Truthdig - The Last Letter

Casualties From the War on Terror, 9/11, and the Invasion of Iraq

Interesting graphic from http://www.prosebeforehos.com/government_employee/09/11/perspective-on-911-and-the-invasions-of-iraq-afghanistan/

Iraq War Humor

Bush's War Turns 5

The Iraqi war will be 5 years old on March 19th. Here are a few of the costs in money and in lives lost:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that the war in Iraq costs up to 9 billion per month. That's on top of the $13 billion spent on the initial deployment.
Here is a summary of the costs:
Initial deployment of troops: $9 billion to $13 billion
Conducting the war: $6 billion to $9 billion per month
Returning forces to US: $5 billion to $7 billion
Temporary occupation of Iraq: $1 billion to $4 billion per month

Almost 4,000 American soldiers and over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the war. There are countless injuries.

Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. Anyone paying any attention knew there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Bush knew there was no connection and went to war anyway for his own personal reasons. This is just a small part of the price the world is paying for his lies. For more blogs on the 5 year anniversary of the war see http://march19-blogswarm.blogspot.com/

What Houston Has Paid For Bush's Lies

Taxpayers in Houston, Texas have paid $3.7 billion for the Iraq War thus far. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
838,527 People with Health Care OR
2,796,369 Homes with Renewable Electricity OR
85,049 Public Safety Officers OR
64,463 Music and Arts Teachers OR
481,255 Scholarships for University Students OR
334 New Elementary Schools OR
43,778 Affordable Housing Units OR
1,577,120 Children with Health Care OR
526,373 Head Start Places for Children OR
68,860 Elementary School Teachers OR
59,011 Port Container Inspectors

This is from http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

A million+ dead

According to a survey done by a major polling group in Britain, over 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion by the US. The survey was done by Opinion Research Business (ORB) This was reported in the NYT yesterday.

935 LIES

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, but Bush and his administration lied about the threat to our security posed by Iraq after 9/11. A study conducted by two non profit groups, The Center For Public Integrity and The Fund For Independence in Journalism concluded that 935 lies were told that "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." The liars include Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Wolfowitz, and Bush, who led the bunch with 259 false statements about WMD's and Iraq's links to al-Qaida.
With a few exceptions these lies were never challenged by the press or by many members of the congress.
I don't see any way our country will ever recover from this. Worse than that is the destruction of Iraq and the killing or maiming of hundreds of thousand of innocent civilians.
Why is nothing is being done about this? Why aren't they all on trial for war crimes? Why does Bush have any approval rating?