Iraq toll apportioned

The butcher’s bill for the Iraq war (Associated Press, Aug. 31):

Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of Aug 31, 2010: 4,416.

Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion: 97,461.

U.S. cost for the Iraq war: $743.4 billion since 2003. Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year projection: $244 billion to $588 billion.

War lasts 2003 to 2010, seven years.

The Bush right must answer here, yet for nothing close to Democrat cost/casualty predictions during the war: Millions dead! Decades of fighting! Trillions in cost! they cried, often. “Unwinnable!” (Barney Frank), “The war is lost!” (Harry Reid), “The Iraq war can’t be won.” (Sen. Obama), ad nauseam.

All the deaths have their own ratio of tragedy, and it remains to a new generation of historians with no political axes to grind as to whether the war was well advised.

Regardless, had the cut-and-run American left not held out years of continual hope that Democrats would force an American surrender if the insurgency just blew up one more crowd of civilians or another squad of coalition soldiers, then the Iraq war would surely have been much shorter and cheaper, and the military and civilian death rates correspondingly lower. Here, the Democrat left must answer to history.

William Slusher

Okanogan