Today's Week In Review section of the NY Times has an excellent piece, by Jeffrey Gettleman, titled "Redirecting Bullets in Baghdad."
Gettleman writes about Iraq from the perspective of a reporter who has just returned after being away for a year. It's likely that the piece won't surprise you overall, but the degree to which the situation has decayed is really nothing short of astounding.
While Dick Cheney continues to rant that perceptions are being skewed by the media, and things are really getting better, and if only we'd all just watch Fox News . . ., it's hard to believe that even he could rebut this one.
Must read.
3 comments:
On a completely different note. I've been trying to clean up my computer to harbor precious memory, and I ended up wiping out all my Mozilla Bookmarks. (Did you know Firefox could be opened in "Safe" mode?) Anyway, when I Googled "bjkeefe" to re-instate your bookmark, your blog is the first thing that pops up! A fairly significant piece of fame, I think. Andy Warhol would have approved.
Ah of course the Bush Admin. Tries to say that the media is "skewing" the perception of Iraq! (ee-rawk) Let's talk about how they thought the war would cost oh...a helluva lot less than the 200 BILLION that some sources are projecting! Those lying little jerks! By the way, any more news on the old guy that Cheny shot?
Matt
Just to be clear: the current estimates for the costs of the war in Iraq are about $1 trillion, or five times the estimate originally put forth by the Bush Administration.
1 trillion (1,000,0000,000,000) = one million, squared.
$1 trillion = about $3,500 for every single person in the US. That's before we add the interest, and keep in mind, almost all of this money has been borrowed, so the interest will be more than the original debt amount before it's paid off.
And let's not forget the body count: approaching 2500 dead Americans (plus at least 16,000 wounded) and at least 10-20 times that many dead Iraqis, mostly innocent civilians.
And of course, W has admitted that there is no end in sight, and has put forth the optimistic (and probably unrealistic) prediction that we will "only" be in Iraq for another three years.
Suddenly, I'm a little glad that I'm way older than you, Matt. It's not going to be my sorry ass paying off these debts. Or trying to explain to the creditors why I can't.
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