Saturday, January 07, 2006

How Did the U.S. Government Annihilate $1 Trillion of American Wealth?

How Did the U.S. Government Annihilate $1 Trillion of American Wealth?

Ask Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and William Kristol. Ask Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney and George Bush. Ask the American Congress. They not only know how to extinguish vast amounts of American wealth, they have done it by attacking Iraq. Of this there is little doubt. They get A+ in destruction of wealth. They are fully qualified to teach a course in any university on the annihilation of wealth.

Sad to say, they are not the only rulers and would-be rulers in many lands, past, present and future, who have been, are now, and will be summa cum laude at Terminator College. But we are Americans, and these are our homegrown leaders. They are ours, and we are theirs. They have pressed the buttons of war and can press them again. The bombs they have launched at our well-being deserve our immediate attention. Every American deserves to know what the price of terrorist reduction in Iraq is.

Ask not what your leaders can do for the country; ask what they can do to the country. Ask what they already have done to the country. Ask how many more Saddams they’d like to take out. Ask what removing one Saddam has cost.

Sad to say, I do not refer to the lives lost, the bodies wounded, and the minds scarred. As each day passes, these relentlessly add still more to the toll of damage done. I refer to the dollars and cents values that are reflected in markets for securities.