How much will the Iraq War cost the U.S. taxpayer?  

On August 1, CNN reported the latest estimates of the cost of the Iraq War are $480 billion more, bringing the total Iraq War cost to $1 trillion.  The war costs $10 billion a month.

It was Paul Wolfowitz, joining with Bush, Cheney and Richard Perle, who engaged in such a rush to launch the Iraq War.  Paul Wolfowitz claimed that the Iraq oil revenue would pay for the cost of the war.

Of course, Wolfowitz was wrong.  The U.S. taxpayer is funding the Iraq War.  The oil contract the U.S. leadership wants calls for foreign investors to control 63 of Iraq's oil wells, leaving 17 under Iraqi control.  

As George Bush shouts himself hoarse, becoming increasingly desperate in the face of what appears to be a mounting tidal wave against him along with his Republican allies heading into Tuesday's election, another troubling event has surfaced.

In today's Los Angeles Times staff writer Peter Spiegel has reported that none other than Richard Perle, Mr. Neoconservative along with Paul Wolfowitz, the super hawkish Cold Warrior called "The Prince of Darkness," has denounced Bush for invading Iraq.  The article in which Perle makes his disclosure appears in January's Vanity Fair.

Perle sternly disclaims the idea that neocons were fundamental figures in the planning of the Iraq War.  Others interviewed for the same article that also spoke critically about Bush's Iraq strategy are former Bush speechwriter David Frum and former Reagan Administration official Ken Adelman.

As Spiegel reveals, "Perle's prominent advocacy of invasion after the September 11 terrorist attacks - and his close relationship with the war's top architects, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy Defense secretary, and Douglas J. Feith, the former Pentagan policy chief - makes his reversal particularly noteworthy."

We stand at the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedies. No solid answers have been provided.  An unconvincing cover-up has been presented, and only under great public duress.  

It is time to assess what really happened on 9/11 and conceive of creative strategies to dig the truth from out of the dusty caverns to which a thoroughly unprincipled unelected government has buried it.

In that the law has been creatively used in a class action lawsuit regarding 9/11 on behalf of deceased victims' family members, another lawsuit that should be promptly filed in federal court is one pertaining to the unconscionable, blood-stained profits that neoconservative warmongers representing America's invisible and unelected government have realized over the corpses and shattered bodies of service personnel and civilians in the Middle East.

The class action lawsuit alluded to earlier creatively employs the RICO statute in an attempt to demand the truth about the causes of the World Trade Center calamities as well as the repercussions that followed.  

Reacting to an article in the June 21 edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that was headlined, "Killing of GI's Barbaric," reader David Hooper of Seattle wrote an interesting letter to the editors that ran in response to this assertion:

"Indeed, Iraqi insurgents brag about their barbaric deeds.  Americans in contrast, torture and kill suspects in secret prisons, then lie about it.  We bomb babies and cover it up.  We've invaded a little country to get its oil, all the while pretending to bring freedom and democracy.

"We are all barbaric.  Who is better, the braggart or the liar?"

That blunt viewpoint might send a stirring message if the Republican Administration has the courage and fairness to honestly and objectively to stop think about what David Hooper wrote.

The headline story in the Seattle Times on Sunday, March 19, 2006 read, "3 years in, hopes fade for Iraq, neighbors".  The Washington report stated the grim Iraq War reality:  "officials and analysts in the United States, Arab countries, Israel and Europe" are saying, "The invasion had produced a vortex of unintended consequences."  

The outcome reported is, "Militancy is on the rise.  Terrorists are using Iraq as a training base and potential launch pad for attacks elsewhere, according to U.S. officials and documents.  Democratic reform remains largely stymied."

It is glaringly apparent that public support for the Iraq War is sharply declining in the U.S. and is almost non-existent elsewhere.

It has taken the American public a long time to recognize what a dangerous Republican Administration has led the public into.  Congress voted to provide the President with war authority and we know the rest.  Is that something to be proud of?  When anyone dared defy this Republican Administration's rush to war they found their patriotism attacked.

Three cheers to Esquire magazine.

The publication, whose tagline is Man at His Best, delivers an astounding 16-page spread in its March issue. Special Report: The Iraq War, Three Years Later (not available online) contains the following articles:

• The Best Years of Our Lives - After being stateside for the past year, one Iraq vet catches up with the guys he served with.
  
  
• Ten Numbers on the State of the Iraq-War Veterans - Shows the impact of a conflict that's about to surpass the Korean War in duration.
  
  
• The Monks of War - An interesting piece on Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, and Commander on the `Thunder Run' to Baghdad, Gen. William Wallace.
  
  
• What They Were Thinking - My personal favorite; predictions from the prominent war planners in 2003 on how the war would go. Oh, boy...

I've got all the goodies (well, except for the Evangeline Lilly spread) below the fold...

George Bush has been quick to preach sacrifice to the American people regarding Iraq.  His request harkens back to two statements I heard about war and peace that I never forgot, and that Bush has made germane.

I knew a Los Angeles travel agent who had been a World War Two member of General James Doolittle's crack Flying Tigers.  His Army Air Force plane was shot down during the war and he spent time in a Japanese POW camp.  "We people who have experienced and seen the destruction of combat are very careful about one thing," he told me.  "When we think people are too quick about advocating war we step back and study the issue very carefully.  When you've been there and seen the damage of war you're much more reluctant about advocating it and greatly concerned about seeking ways to prevent it."