Good Morning, VietNam

[richlevy]

I agree with their assessment. At $120-150 billion per year, we could looking at $1 trillion dollars if we spend most of a decade in Iraq and factor in additional stateside costs like pensions and rehabilition for 10 to 20 thousand wounded. The US spent about $15.8 in foreign aid in 2003. If we want to see the Iraq war as an exercise in foreign aid, than the program is costing 7 times the amount of aid going to the rest of the world and will continue to do so each year, while actually costing us goodwill instead of promoting it.

The next US president is probably going to have to clean this up and he had better start by finding a diplomatic way to say that Bush screwed up. Any attempt by the next adminstration to help Bush paint Iraq in the 'win' column will damage or destroy credibility. Everyone except the most partisan or clueless individual realizes that we screwed up. Any attempt to deny that would make us look like "Baghdad Bob".