Originally Posted by chainyanker

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey found 27% of those polled nationwide approve of the Republican Party and the Bush administration. This tells me that about 27% of the people in this country are incapable of critical thinking. They only know 'what' to think not 'how' to think. The 'what' is slurped up from the trough of fear mongering and ignorance spewed out from the likes of 'No Doubt' Cheney...neocon pablum. A recent example being the disillusioned 'Iraq is a tremendous success!' declaration from Mr. 'No Doubt.' as in 'There is No Doubt Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.') Let's look at some current observations:

1) As of today 4076 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq (increasing death rate in recent weeks).

2) More than 29,000 have been wounded, with thousands suffering horrific injuries (did you see the news clip of the surviving soldier with nearly half his skull gone?)

3) The monthly cost of the Iraq war is around $12.5 billion a month according to a new book published by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-writer Linda Bilmes with total cost estimated at $3 trillion if troops don't leave completely before 2017. ('$30-40 billion tops' and '60 - 90 day cakewalk' --- 'Donald Duck' Rumsfeld in 2003)

4) Somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion.
(so much for pro-life beliefs)

5) More than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced, 2 million of them to other countries, many of them in untenable economic and social situations.

6) Purple-fingered elections have only resulted in an unenforceable constitution and an inept and hapless Iraqi government wrought with corruption, confined to the Green Zone (aka Fort Apache.) and sucking more than 15% (20 to 30% by some estimates) of the Iraqi oil production into the black market.

7) Billions wasted on reconstruction (did they ever finish that multi-million dollar women and children's hospital in southern Iraq that was boasted about by Laura Bush? Last I saw on the news it was over half done and construction had stopped with no plans to continue.)

8 ) General Petraeus recently declaring 'we haven't turned the corner and there is no light at the end of the tunnel.' (Actually many corners have been turned and each time the coalition and Iraqi government have gone down some dark murky alley and gotten mugged, after turning enough corners they've managed to circle back to what looks like the original corner, thus the General's declaration.)

9) The main political party of the majority Shiites call themselves 'The Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq', this sure doesn't give me good democracy vibes about what Senator McCain calls 'success in Iraq': turning it into another Iowa by his definition and having troops stay there for years more (getting picked off for another 100 years?)

10) Average electricity availability is 8 hours/day, used to be 24 hours pre-invasion.

11) Now Iran has gotten their foot in the Iraqi door, thanks to the invasion. (What will this wrought?)

Many more points could be listed and none of them point to a 'tremendous success' but rather an abysmal catastrophe. Any success points are far outweighed by the issues that point to continuing strife and lost of life at enormous cost and more regional instability. Yet there are fools in this country who think all this is a 'tremendous success' because they don't question, they only open their mouths for more toxic pablum...and they think all this is good for the country...totally naive. The bottomline is the U.S. is in a colossal mess thanks to neocon ideology.