Ya wanna talk fiscal irresponsibility?

     The next time you hear Paul Ryan or someone else cut from the same cloth, criticize the Obama administration, remember this. "In March, 2003, Pres. Bush and VP Cheney sent American GIs into war in Iraq. Why? Bush said Saddam Hussein was an “evil” person. (personal interjection, Saddam was an evil person, so is Assad in Syria, so, for promoting the poverty status quo among Indian women was Mother Teresa, so is Vladimir Putin, so was anyone in Korea named Kim, we just didn't invade them!) Then Bush said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (he lied). Members of the U.N. told Bush to stay out of Iraq. Benjamin Ferencz, prosecutor in Nuremberg War Crimes warned of war crimes in Iraq. On May 1, 2003, Bush thought the war was over and proclaimed “mission accomplished.”

     Now, after ten years of constant war, occupation, and death, it is time to put a price tag on the Bush failure. Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies finds the war has cost U.S. taxpayers $1.7 trillion----so far. When future expenses are added up such as medical expenses for veterans and their families, the cost of the war will grow for the next 40 years.

      Of course, the war destroyed Iraqi healthcare. Thousands of Iraqi medical doctors left the country. The Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction found massive waste, fraud, and theft of construction funds. Prof. Catherine Lutz at BrownUniversity says the appropriations, the expenses of borrowed funds, and cumulative interest through 2053 will exceed a huge $3.9 trillion burden on the U.S. taxpayer.

      David Lazarus, LA Times, says the price tag for the war in Iraq will eventually pass the $6 trillion mark. When the financial toll is added up, we see war appropriations at $1.3 trillion. Add to that figure, the costs of interest on the debt, veterans’ medical claims, social costs to vet’s families, foreign aid to those who suffered from the U.S. invasion, and more war spending from 2012 through 2020, and soon the U.S. taxpayer will be on the hook for more than $6 trillion."

      And the Republicans warn of Democratic attempts to provide health care to all Americans as "fiscally irresponsible?" They need to extract their heads from their collective asses.