Dave Lindorff, afterdowningstreet.org
It’s been four years now since President Bush pulled his stunt of landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, which his staff had ordered to circle around outside of San Diego for the purpose, and which they had decked out with a huge banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” for a backdrop.
On its face, it’s been a wasted four years, a wasted $500 billion (or $2 trillion, if you count the debt and futre veterans’ care), a wasted 3400 American lives (or 55000 American lives if you count all the physically maimed and injured, or 250,000 if you add in the psychologically damaged), a wasted 650,000 Iraqi lives (most of them innocent women and children and the elderly), and indeed a wasted country, since Iraq will never again be the nation and society it was before the US invasion.
(Original Article)Â