A PIG IN A POKE

Soooooo...Congress, the media and a large slice of the electorate bought it, and subsequently we've all had to pay for it. When will it stop? The high price of official lies:

Some of the administration’s adherents, who cling to President Bush with a devotion that brings to mind the followers of North Korean despot Kim Jong-Il, insist that the absence of Iraqi WMD is irrelevant, since the war was justified for humanitarian reasons. Talk radio personality Sean Hannity, to cite one exponent of that view, typically dismisses criticism of the Iraq war with what he foolishly regards as a devastating rhetorical question: "Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein in power?"

Actually, the world would have been better off if Washington had not connived in Saddam’s rise to power, and supplied him with the material and economic means to stay in power for decades. And it’s not as if evil is a static quantity. Deposing Saddam by invading and occupying Iraq gave rise to other evils:

* As noted previously, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians – perhaps as many as 100,000, according to the British journal Lancet -- who were alive prior to March 19, 2003 have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion. They are manifestly not "better off" now than they were when Saddam was in power.

* More than 1,300 American soldiers, Guardsmen, Reservists, and Marines are dead. Probably 14-20,000 Iraqi troops (most of them hapless conscripts) have also been killed. They were alive prior to March 19, 2003. They are obviously not "better off" now than they were when Saddam was in power.

* More than 10,000 American military personnel have been injured – many of them crippled and maimed for life – because of the invasion. It’s difficult to know how many Iraqi soldiers and non-combatants have been similarly wounded. They join the ever-expanding ranks of people not "better off" because of the invasion.

* Before the war began in March 2003, Iraq was ruled by a secular authoritarian regime that was very brutal to those who threatened it, but was benign in other areas including freedom of religion. Now, facing the prospect of a hardline Islamic regime, Iraqi Christians are fleeing to Syria and Jordan. Iraqi Christians being driven out of their homeland are manifestly not "better off" now. And those who remain, Christians and non-Christian alike, may find themselves living under a regime more oppressive than Saddam's.

* The manpower demands of the war have badly overtaxed our National Guard and Reserves. This has depleted many police departments and emergency services of critical "first responders" – key personnel with crucial skills that will be indispensable if we are struck by another terrorist attack. Meanwhile, our southern border gapes open, an already horrendous problem that can only get worse if President Bush is able to get Congress to pass his so-called temporary worker program that will provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. And there are plausible – and terrifying – concerns about the possibility of al-Qaeda smuggling a nuclear weapon into the U.S. from Mexico. So in terms of our national security, it’s not just that we’re no "better off," we’re actually in greater peril.

* The war is costing us hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t have. Washington relies increasingly on foreign central banks to finance our budget and trade deficits. Communist China has emerged as our largest foreign creditor. They’re delighted to buy up our debt, while we continue to export our industrial base, build Beijing’s currency reserves, and alienate the rest of the world. Communist China, unlike Iraq, is an actual threat to our nation, both strategically and economically. Once again, we see that the war has actually left us much worse off than we were before.

Hat tip to Cursor.