percent to pay for the Bush administration budget.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07342t.pdf

Lots of us here have written about the longer term impact this administration will have on all of us and our kids futures. Not too pretty.

Now, about that war that's at 350 Billion plus and with projected growth potentially reaching a price tag of one half trillion dollars! Are we completely sure there is a solid return there, even with the 30 year oil contracts granted to the multi-nationals currently not paying much in the way of taxes?

Every time any of us decides to gripe about how much our taxes are, consider the information in this report, remember this administration chose to cut taxes, largely on the rich, during an expensive and unpredictable military engagement, and then consider how we would be doing in terms of being able to pay for basic services, such as health care, had we actually required a solid justification for the Iraq war.

This is pretty ugly folks. It casts a false light on the impact that core and basic services places on all of us. The reality is we are bearing a heavy burden for the mistake in Iraq. And we appear to be in a largely hopeless position where getting a return on those dollars is concerned.


Sacrifice indeed.

Interestingly, the GAO concludes that:

ending the war will not solve the problem, rolling back tax cuts will not solve it, growing will not solve it, etc....

Essentially their message is that the damage has been done. Doing these things will ease the burden, particularly in combination with PAYGO type legislation and full budget accounting. However, the end result of all the borrowing and spending is a higher tax burden for all of us for quite some time.

$350 BILLION on a lie (wmds) and an astronomically-sized mess to clean up. What a Mother of All F*ck Ups legacy Bush is leaving behind.

1 year, 362 days until the honing bit comes out of our collective a$$es.

Counting right with you there. It can't get here soon enough.

I've an extremely tough time with the whole WMD thing. It essentially removes the high ground from us, rendering our efforts in Iraq largely meaningless. There is no victory for an unjust war. We might get something, but we won't see any vindication for our acts.

The other biggie, not counted in the dollar cost, is the total squandering of the global unity we saw after 9/11. This, perhaps more than anything this Resident has done, is a complete waste of what otherwise would have been an oppertunity to render the act of terror useless for all but small unenlightened and underdeveloped parts of the world.

W really screwed the pooch on that one.