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Whether you measure it by the lives that have been lost, the sap of taxpayer money, the loss of accountability or the breach of the numerous laws and institutions that make up the foundation of our country, the Iraq War has cost us. It is astounding that our leaders have the stomach to be aware of all these costs and can still look us in the eye and tell us this war has been anything but an abominable failure. Here are the highlights of the latest befuddlements in the Bush administration's handling of the war:
*The end of March saw the bloodiest two-week period we have experienced since September 2007, resulting in the loss of 25 American lives in fourteen days. That week, on the same day a roadside bomb claimed over 50 lives, Dick Cheney and John McCain visited Iraq; McCain told CNN, “We are succeeding. And we can succeed, and American casualties overall are way down.”
*A lawsuit waged against KBR regarding the senseless death of Sgt. Ryan Maseth due to negligence in electrical wiring has uncovered details that the private contracting company's failure to fix reported faulty wiring led to the deaths of at least eleven other troops. Details probing into the suicide of Army Colonel Ted Westhusing in Iraq found that greed and corruption in the attitudes and behaviors of his commanders was a contributing factor to his emotional distress. One of his commanders? David Petraeus.
*On March 11th, the Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on waste, fraud and abuse of American tax dollars in Iraq, which described corruption in contracts as “widespread” and “rampant,” and found that “poor accountability has resulted in thousands of weapons provided by the U.S. to Iraqi security forces being stolen, looted, or otherwise provided to insurgents and militias to use against U.S. troops.”
It's too late to get our money back. But its not too late to demand that our leaders use our tax money in a responsible manner that contributes to, not undermines, our security. Progressive Future has launched a brand-new website to provide our supporting activists with the tools and resources necessary to launch an all-out campaign to change the direction of our country. This new site includes features such as a weekly cartoon like the one above, daily updated news you can use, recent outrages, and direct action opportunities, like our petition to call for contractor accountability. Join Progressive Future in taking back our country.
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We have no money, we have no support, we have no plan and we have no progress. Furthermore, we just found out that the Bush administration has been recruiting, grooming and bribing so-called "military analysts" to go on news channels and say positive things about the war, so everything that makes me enraged about the war is probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I understand your anger directed at people like me who question the war; I'd be angry too if I was in your position, but your anger is misguided. I don't want to see our troops be deployed with faulty resources, defense shields, with polluted water, with faulty-wired barracks that subject them to electrocution. I don't want to see contractors endanger our troops and not face consequences because they are in bed with the administration and therefore exempted from justice.
Your anger is causing you to sound ignorant and ill-informed, eventhough you are a primary source for what is going on. But you represent yourself poorly when you make assumptions about where I come from, and why I am against the war. If you are too blinded by anger to have a civilized discussion without slinging ignorant insults at anyone with a different opinion than you, I suggest you transfer your efforts to a conservative blog, like Bill O'Reilly's. Youre in the wrong place.