Monetary Masturbation

You'll never see that figure in your checkbook. $102 billion. The initial cost for the invasion of Iraq. An average of $4.8 billion per month. The cost to prosecute a war is enormous. But did we get the bang for our buck?

The White House budget director claimed that the war would be "an affordable endeavor". What does that mean? Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Defense Secretary, told Congress that Iraq would be able to soon finance its own construction. How long have we been there?

So various Reserve and National Guard units were activated, mobilized and deployed to fight the war. Ill trained and even more ill equipped, they responded valiantly. The monies appropriated did not provide for upgrade of their equipment and vehicles. When this question was put to Secretary of Defense Rumsfield, he responded that "you go to war with the Army you have, not the one you want". Didn't we hear somewhere along the line that the generals in charge of the war would receive all they asked for? Was that just in the form of bodies to serve as canon fodder? Did they neglect to mention that our soldiers and Marines need the best to accomplish the task at hand with minimum casualties? Where is the money being spent?

Shall we bring up Halliburton and the no bid contract to repair the Iraqi oil industry? A civilian Army procurement officer did and found herself out of a job. Poor performance evaluations cites the Pentagon. War can be a cash cow to some.

Now the Administration has asked for $80 billion in addition to the $25 billion supplemental emergency spending already approved. Where is it going? Yet, the Administration has seen fit to budget the Veterans Affairs system at $65.3 billion. Couldn't we round that to $63.5? The soon to be former, if not already in that status of as now, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi told a House Committee that he had requested $1.2 billion more than he received. Do we see a pattern here of dismissing the dissidents?

V.A. Hospitals are at the breaking point and there are concerns that funding will not increase at a level necessary to meet demands. Waiting periods for treatment grow. But this is only one area which plagues our veterans. Real costs of education outweigh the benefits received. Death benefits top out at $12,000.

THE TRUTH IS... we spend more to send our troops into harms way than we do to undo the harm once they return. How do we square this with them? They don't even get a kiss.