Surprise, surprise... President Bush signed additional legislation allocating and 'additional' $82 Billion dollars to pay for the "conflicts" in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They're saying that this puts total anti-terrorism spending since September 11th, 2001 over $300 billion dollars.
I for one refuse to look at this as the price of the international anti-terrorism effort. Truth be known, the bulk of the $300 billion has been spent exclusively on the Iraq conflict -- an action to protect us from weapons that were determined to have never existed in the first place, and to deal a major blow to international terrorism. Now, many experts suspect that the negative world image the US garnered, thanks to the Iraq conflict, has led to a surge in terrorist recruitment.
On a positive note, however, the bill does include language requiring the administration to communicate with Congress regarding the number of troops they're planning to keep in Iraq through the end of 2006. It's also supposed to require more candid communication between the various government branches regarding our 'actual' progress in Iraq.
"There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." - Paul Wolfowitz (United States Deputy Secretary of Defense) - Congressional Testimony Regarding 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - March 20th, 2003
I'm convinced that a government job represent the pinnacle of job security. I cannot think of any other profession where you could be THIS wrong and remain employed. What's even better about a government job is that you'll actually get promoted for this kind of thing --- Paul Wolfowitz will begin is NEW job as the President of the World Bank on June 1st, 2005.
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