A TRILLION spent on Iraq? What the HELL did Americans get for this expenditure?

[BigBearJohn]

I was listening to the Treasury Secretary today on CSPAN
and he said if we REALLY tightened up the tax code, gave
more money to the IRS for enforcement, the government
could possibly squeeze $30 billion out of the American
public in TEN YEARS.

TEN DAMN YEARS for $30 billion dollars.... the same
amount we SPEND IN ONE DAMN month in Iraq!!!@#$!!!

I ask you: what POSSIBLE benefit are we getting for
spending this TRILLION dollars in Iraq?

If, instead, the government spent ONE TRILLION
ON AMERICAN CITIZENS -- what could we achieve?

On CSPAN
Sen. Sanders just said, he "does not believe that the
Bush Administration is trying to help all of the
people. Don't believe that at all. I think you
guys work day and night to help the people on top
and I think you turn your backs on middle income
people, working people, and low income people."

[ananda]

1. What the HELL did they get!?!

Why .. hell of course.

The entire last six years has been nothing but hell,
and it's only gettin worse.

[OHdem10]

2. Cuts in all Domestic programs including

Children's Health Programs

[BigBearJohn]

3. hell yes

[midnight]

7. You got that right. And not only did we get hell, but we get

monitored during this hell, and if we complain, we are called unpatriotic.

[w4rma]

4. A few very very very wealthy Americans (who probably rarely live in America) got wealthier.

The rest of us got pushed further into debt and/or stagflation.

Or if you are a soldier you might have gotten maimed or killed or stuck in the desert for multiple tours.

[smoogatz]

5. What we got:

A broken military, a failed state mired in a brutal civil war, 25,000 dead and wounded Americans, 600,000 dead Iraqis--no telling how many wounded. Let's put that trillion-dollar figure in perspective another way: it works out to $3333 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., or, even more staggering, roughly $5500 for evey American taxpayer, on average--the lion's share of which has gone straight into the pockets of arms manufacturers, military "contractor" outfits like Blackwater, and big logistics suppliers like Halliburton/KBR. It's a staggeringly brazen transfer of wealth from the middle class to big corporations--and we get nothing in return but a generation or two of militarized Iraqis, anxious to kill Americans. Heckuva job, W!

[napi21]

11. You forgot to mention making every nation in the world hate us too!

If someone had told me in 2000 that one man could do all of this is 4 years, I'd have laughedand said THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! OK, I'm cooking my crow now.

[tabasco]

6. Sheer satisfaction that men like this have profited enormously from it all.

[glitch]

8. :(

:puke:

[The Backlash Cometh]

9. Grover Norquist is dancing a jig.

[Lisa]

10. in a word: screwed.

The vast majority of Americans didn't even get a mint on their pillow. (I'm not counting Bush's "have-mores", who filled their pockets with stolen US and Iraqi money ... I am having serious doubts about whether such people are really Americans, or just operating under a flag of convenience.)

[Selatius]

12. We could've had a new energy policy for 1 trillion dollars with enough left over to...

subsidize every college student in America through college with full pell grants and enough left over to give every American access to affordable health care. There would probably still be more money left over after that, too. We could raise education standards and fix our infrastructure, etc.

[spacelady]

13. The old maxim of " follow the money if you want to know why

crime occurs." The motive is usually greed in its basest form.

[porkrind]

14. We could have taken that mountain of cash and f*cking lit it on fire

and it would have been better for all concerned. Jeez, what a waste of blood and treasure.

[mmonk]

15. A rise in share prices of oil company stocks for their portfolio?