Are We Better Off Now?

Juan Cole at Informed Comment tells us that the US Military is spending about $1 Billion a week on the fighting in Iraq. Now, I don’t know about other people, but I think that money would have been better used here at home for about a zillion other things. And, furthermore, I think that the $200 Billion spent so far on Iraq would have been much better spent here in the United States as well.

This is what George W. Bush has wrought, by invading Iraq when in fact there were no weapons of mass distruction, even though the evidence provided by his own intelligence agencies was inconclusive prior to the war, and the agencies may well have been pressured into saying what Bush wanted to hear; and by deciding that Iraq and Al Qaeda were cooperating, when in fact there was almost no cooperation between the two.

Sadly, we are now stuck in a quagmire in Iraq. It costs us greatly to stay; it costs us greatly to leave. I don’t know what the solution is. But I know one thing, I intend to hold the man responsible for getting us into this mess. Bush has shown that his decisions are not based on solid facts and reality, and thus is unfit for a second term. I believe that John Kerry, not George W. Bush, will more realistically set foreign policy in the future.

Update: Kevin Drum posts a map drawn up by the State Department in November 2001 showing countries in which Al Qaeda was active. Interestingly, Iraq was not one of those countries.