Iraq War Was Not Worth the Cost; Don't Repeat the Error (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | The war in Iraq is officially over. Our troops are coming home in vast numbers. The conflict lasted almost nine years and carried tremendous cost. The important question to ask is, "Was it worth it?"

The casualty figures run at 4,487 dead and 32,226 wounded, according to a New York Times report. Assuming those numbers are accurate, it approaches 40,000 combined dead and wounded from the war, and that's just the Americans. CNN reported more than 655,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war -- and that was just by 2006. With hundreds and thousands of dead and wounded there should be some kind of accomplishment, some favorable outcome. But there really isn't.

For starters, none of those dead people is coming back just because the war's over. The wounded that lost limbs and the veterans suffering from PTSD aren't going to magically be cured of their medical issues.

A MarketWatch report estimates the total cost of the war to be $4 trillion dollars of debt. That's trillion with a T. MarketWatch believes it may take 50 years to pay that down.

We killed Saddam Hussein, an awful dictator, but was that worth the cost? No. On top of the cost in human lives and national debt, the government is still not stable in Iraq. We never found a huge stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. We thwarted no planned invasion of American soil.

What we have done is angered most of the Middle Eastern and Muslim worlds. That doesn't seem like an outcome that increases the safety of the American people.

Now there are rumblings of a new war with Iran. A PressTV report describes how Richard Perle, one of the neoconservatives who beat the war drum regarding Iraq, is now repeating the story about Iran: "I am willing to accuse Iran of building nuclear weapons," he says in the report. "I do not think there is any question about it."

That's essentially the same speech we heard about WMDs that led us into most of a decade of war with Iraq.

I urge the American people, Congress, and the president to beware launching another war over the same faulty logic that led us into Iraq. Our nation is war-weary and our economy may not survive it.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111215/us_ac/10688709_iraq_war_was_not_worth_the_cost_dont_repeat_the_error

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