Free Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca, Catherine Whitney Page B

where is Bush, the Commander in Chief? For a guy who loves photo ops so much, there’s one photo op you never see: the President in Dover, Delaware, standing next to a flag-draped coffin. He doesn’t want to be identified with coffins. For the first time in memory, cameras have been banned from Dover. The coffins arrive in the deep of night, when nobody can see them. Hell, they don’t even call them coffins. They call them “transfer tubes.”
     
    IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?
     
    The cost of human life is the greatest tragedy of Iraq, but don’t forget the other costs. Let’s look at it from the perspective of a CEO. When you decide to launch a project—whether you’re building a car or starting a war—one of the first things you do is look at the cost/benefit picture. That is, what are we getting for the money?
    As of this writing, the cost of the war is estimated at about half a trillion dollars. But according to some experts, the true cost could be as high as $2 trillion, when you factor in lifetime disability and health care for the wounded, the interest on our debt, and the rising oil prices.
    On the ground, it’s been kind of hard to keep track of how much we’re spending, because the accounting is extremely loose in the new Iraq. It’s like the Wild West over there. At one point, $1.5 billion was floating around in cash, to be used to hire workers and pay off mullahs, and God knows what else. Paul Bremer, who was in charge of the rebuilding effort for a while, kept $600 million in cash on hand. I guess he put it in his sock drawer.
    Don’t forget. That’s your money they’re spending. Do you want to throw it into an Iraqi sinkhole, or do you want to provide health care? Do you want to hand it over to Halliburton, or do you want to make sure American kids go to college?
    To give you an idea of the magnitude of the amount we’re pouring into Iraq, let’s look at the conservative estimate of what half a trillion dollars would buy here at home:
     
We could hire 8 MILLION SCHOOLTEACHERS.
We could give FREE HEALTH CARE to everyone for one year.
We could provide 25 MILLION COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS.
We could give every American FREE GAS for one year.
We could build 3 MILLION AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS.
We could hire 8 MILLION POLICE, FIRE, AND EMT WORKERS.
     
    We could put a dent in some of the most pervasive problems we face as a nation. So, the next time someone in government says we can’t afford health care or education or border security, just remember, it’s all about priorities.
     
    FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS
     
    Ronald Reagan once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” He actually got that quote from John Adams. The Bush administration doesn’t really believe in facts. It believes if you tell a lie often enough it becomes true. But those inconvenient facts keep getting in the way. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. They said the war would take six months tops. It’s been four years. They said Saddam Hussein colluded with Al Qaeda on the 9/11 attacks. That never happened.
    I could go on, but the lies get boring. The administration likes to call their mistakes “faulty intelligence.” There was no faulty intelligence. Let’s call a lie a lie. Can’t we believe anything these guys say?
    It takes courage to face the truth, but I believe we must. Not only about the disastrous course of the war, but about our nation’s mixed history with Saddam Hussein’s regime. Don’t forget that we backed Saddam in his war with Iran. (There’s a famous photograph from 1983 that shows Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam Hussein’s hand. Everyone is smiling!) The Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations provided Iraq with over $15 billion in loan guarantees. When Saddam sprayed chemical gas on the Kurds, he used U.S. helicopters sold to him for crop dusting. With Saddam now in his grave, the whole truth may never be told. But one thing is clear: Nobody’s hands are clean in this