$25 Billion more for Illegal War

 The National Priorities Project estimates that with the additional $25 billion Bush recently asked for the Iraq war, the total spent will come to $152.6 billion.

Most observers agree that the additional $25 billion is much less than what is really needed, and that Bush is asking for less because he knows that in this election year to ask for more would be political suicide. He figures he will get more after the election – if he wins.

So what does spending $152.6 billion on a war that the president lied to get us into mean for us in the U.S.? We know its costs in lives, in the damagae done to Iraq, to the environment, but what is the impact on people in the U.S.?

This $152.6 billion has been asked for and will be spent in about a 15 month period. By comparison, funding for the No Child Left Behind Act, by all accounts underfunded by about $10 billion, came to about $67 billion last year. Environmental protection programs came to about $13 billion. Both of these improtant programs have failed on a number of fronts due to low spending and unfunded mandates. State budgets in the last year have been gutted by about $29 billion and 21 states have had to lay workers off. Public schools receive less money, social insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid are being stripped, claims abound that Social Security is in fiscal crisis (which is untrue), and job training and higher educational programs and funding his being cut.

Neo-con ideologues have long argued that the public programs we rely on should be dismantled completely or the money used to fund them should be handed over to subsidize large corproations to do the work (outsourcing). Ignoring the fact that when this is done, private corporations don't do a better job, are usually far more expensive and generally are corrupt, neo-cons have had privatization has a priority for decades. Now that they are in power they are using any and every method to accomplish it – even to the point of bankrupting the U.S. government. Hence tax cuts to the rich that have turned huge surpluses into huge deficits over night.

It is possible to see the Iraq war in this light. It is about oil. It is about imperialism and asserting U.S. domination over a defenseless, fourth or fifth rate military power in a strategically important region of the world. Let's not lose sight of that. But this war is also about gutting our public services.

The removal of Bush from office and a strong movement to save our public services and to expand them, such as a unviersal healthcare program, will get us headed in the right direction.