Military Spending:

43 Percent of Your Tax Dollars Go to War


Many of us are starting to prepare our 2007 taxes, but how many of us know what our tax dollars are actually paying for? FCNL calculates that 43 cents of every dollar {PDF} you'll pay in taxes go to pay for current and past military activities.

War Is Not the Answer!

Especially WARS Of CHOICE!

And I wish I could have been at the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week.

From the report written about the speach, Murtha and the Cost of the War, Rep. John P. Murtha gave, any doubters were no more when they left!

"Less than 1 percent of the public is making the sacrifice that these troops [in Iraq and Afghanistan] are making," Murtha said. He noted his proposal for a war tax, which was shot down by the Democratic leadership.
"You can't put a trillion-dollar war on a credit card and leave the bills for our children to pay," he said. "The same Americans suffering in Iraq today will be paying for this borrowed war for the rest of their lives."

He goes on to lay out what Costs this War has reaped, and it's not only the Monetary Costs, much Deeper, Very Much Deeper!

"The military is in worse shape than they were seven years ago. No question -- everybody will tell you that."

When one sees John Murtha speaking, especially as to the Military and now the Wars, he's the Public Voice of the military Brass speaking to him!

This was in the Washington Post on the 11th, today, the 12th, we get the following LTE:

Tallying the War's Costs
Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) got most of the costs of the trillion-dollar Iraq war right, as noted in Walter Pincus's Fine Print column [In the Loop, Feb. 11]. At least in this column, though, Mr. Murtha did not mention the cost of lives lost or of caring for the wounded -- costs this country will be paying for decades.

Where is Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. now? For those who don't remember, Mr. Daniels was the Office of Management and Budget director who estimated the cost of a war in Iraq to be "only" $50 billion to $60 billion.

Hidden Costs of War:

Long-Term Price of Providing Veterans Medical Care Could Reach $660 Billion

Over 200,000 soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been treated at
Veterans Affairs medical facilities thus far, with 900,000 still deployed on
active duty. A new study from Harvard University predicts that the cost of
medical care and compensation benefits for returning veterans will skyrocket
once those troops return home.

Listen/Watch/Read


Peace Activists Launch The Occupation Project: A Campaign of Sustained
Nonviolent Civil Disobedience to End the Iraq War

Kathy Kelly joins us hours after being released from jail. She was one of
ten people arrested in Sen. McCain's office in Washington. Eight more were
arrested in the Illinois offices of Senators Obama and Durbin. Kelly just
returned from two months living and working with Iraqi refugees in Amman,
Jordan.

Listen/Stop/Read

News Crawl 1-21-07

Pentagon sees U.S. war cost in Iraq rising

The steadily rising Iraq war price tag will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said on Thursday, as heavy replacement costs for lost, destroyed and aging equipment mount.
The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month, having increased from a monthly "burn rate" of around $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.

For war zone workers, a new fight

US companies employing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have refused to settle workers' compensation and medical benefit claims for hundreds of war-zone injuries that range from back pain to post-traumatic stress.
A Globe review of rulings by administrative judges that resolve disputed claims found that Halliburton Co. , DynCorp International, and other US contractors have been ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation to workers whose claims they initially denied. In some cases, the companies had fought the claims for years even though their own doctors agreed that a worker had been injured.
Judges ruled in favor of the employee three times as often as they ruled for the companies, according to the review.

Show Me The Intelligence

Have you noticed? Neither President George W. Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney have cited any U.S. intelligence assessments to support their fateful decision to send 21,500 more troops to referee the civil war in Iraq. This is a far cry from October 2002, when a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was rushed through in order to trick Congress into giving its nihil obstat for the attack on Iraq.

The Central Question

Government routinely lies, and so do many corporations. That mysterious commitment to the public good, which once joined Americans from many different classes and positions, seems to have dissolved. Integrity, which simply means being true regardless of consequences to one's own beliefs, seems to have no market value in America today.

US Plans Envision Broad Attack on Iran: Analyst

US contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former US intelligence analyst said on Friday.

Cheney's Dead-Enders

"With the departure of his longtime friend Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton's resignation as UN ambassador, and Democrats taking over Congress, times seem grim for the Dick Cheney wing of the Bush administration. The vice president's vision of a 'unitary executive' - otherwise known as the imperial presidency - will almost certainly be challenged by congressional oversight committees, and perhaps by the courts."

Protesters Will Urge Congress to Stand Up to Bush

Americans angered by Bush's plans to escalate the Iraq war will flood the streets of Washington on Saturday, January 27, in a massive national peace march organized by United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Marchers will call on Congress to listen to the voters, not Bush, by using its power to end Bush's war and bring the troops home. The last three national marches organized by UFPJ each attracted between 300,000 and 500,000 people.

"I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of
gratitude" - The pResident {Yep up to 655,000 are really Grateful, many in
their Mass Graves, as are their Survivors}


"I think once they get in harm's way, Congress's tradition is to
support those troops," Mr. Hadley said. {Harms Way, shows what the
administration thinks of the Troops, it's called a Strong Defense!}

The Failed Policies will Haunt Us and the World for Decades!