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WHO WILL PAY FOR BUSH'S IRAQ WAR? HERE ARE A FEW HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS

By Bill Gallagher

"What did you do in the war, Daddy?"
"I got a big tax cut and passed the bill on to you."
-- Ronald Brownstein, The Los Angeles Times


DETROIT -- Who's going to pay for the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Middle-class, wage-earning taxpayers for the most part, the people whose money the government grabs up front with deductions from their paychecks.

President Bush will never say that, because he'd have to use the forbidden word sacrifice. He's content to charge the price of violence to the national Visa card and let us, our children and grandchildren pick up the tab for war down the road with interest tacked on.

The president's design to attack Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein is an obsession madly in search of justification. The whole exercise of UN weapons inspectors finding or not finding anything in Iraq is meaningless to the warmongering Bushies. It's simply a ruse, a phony quest for weapons to give some international justification to a decision made long ago.

A small, but determined, group of people in the White House and Pentagon had Saddam Hussein in their crosshairs long before Sept. 11 and the terrorist attacks provided a convenient rationale to go after him.

The masters of subterfuge became more zealous when the elusive and ever more dangerous Osama bin Laden proved to be so difficult to capture or kill.

"Remember he tried to kill my daddy," was President Bush's most candid and honest justification for pursuing Saddam Hussein.

Top advisors who were longtime advocates of ousting Hussein quickly pounced on the Sept. 11 attacks and connected their cause to the war on terrorism. The president, who was ripe for the arguments, closed the decision-making to a small group led by Vice President Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. They already had agreed on the military invasion of Iraq, and taking any other approach was not even considered.

In a fascinating review of the events and internal decision-making at the White House, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler reports President Bush approved the planning of a military invasion of Iraq on Sept. 17, 2001, just six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Since that time, everything we've heard from the Bushies about war being the last resort is a public act. Their strategy is painfully simple. If we find Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, we attack. If we don't find weapons of mass destruction, we just say there are and attack anyhow.

Somehow, in this great planning for war, the Bushies chose to ignore a fundamental issue. How do you pay for it, especially when the government is already running up massive deficits?

Ousted White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey made a big oops when he told the Wall Street Journal the bill for the invasion of Iraq could reach $200 billion. As Shrub's daddy used to say, it's "not prudent" to say those things in public.

After giving Lindsey the heave-ho, the president's new economic advisor said the war will only cost a mere $60 billion, never explaining what fuzzy math he used to arrive at that new figure.

Remember, in Gulf War I, the Saudis, Kuwaitis and Japanese picked up a big share of the tab. That's not going to happen in Gulf War II.

We should ask the Saudis to quietly slip us some money anyhow. They know how to do that and, since they funded and staffed the Sept. 11 attacks, maybe they could assuage some guilt.

One Saudi sheik we should hit up immediately is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.You'll recall he's the guy who tried to give New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani $10 million to aid the victims of Sept. 11. Giuliani nobly refused the check and told the sheik where he could shove it.

But Prince Alwaleed just dropped $500,000 on the Phillips Academy Andover, the exclusive prep school Bush the Elder and Shrub both attended. The money went to the newly created George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund.

The school had no problem accepting the money Giuliani found too filthy to touch and a Bush spokesperson said the former president and his son "felt it was given in good faith." Don't you just love those Bush family values?

The Bushies won't even mention the mounting deficits in the context of war costs. At the rate we're going, by next fiscal year the federal deficit could top $350 billion and George W. would break his daddy's record for red ink.

That figure doesn't include Iraq invasion and occupation costs. The human toll and suffering in war is certainly the greatest cost, but if the Bushies were ever struck with a moment of political honesty, they might mention the next generation of Americans will be burdened with enormous war debt.

Why don't we make the domestic and international business interests that will benefit most from war in Iraq pay for it?

A new consortium of oil and energy companies, military contractors, auto companies, any and all corporations in line to reap the spOils (sic) of war, ought to pay for it. The new entity, a business and government partnership named Shrubco, could use existing cash flow or simply float bonds to finance the war.

Shrubco would set a patriotic example and precedent the world would admire. The media should kick in too, and become part of Shrubco. NBC, owned by big military contractor General Electric, should lead the way, and maybe the Pentagon could supply the network with exclusive smart bomb video.

Fox and CNN could finance alternate weeks of the war, and all the media could urge viewers to invest in Shrubco.

Rush Limbaugh and his army of dittoheads, so hell-bent for war, would surely be among the first to put up their own money for the battle for freedom and whatever can be taken with it. They could sponsor a "Rush to War Bonds" drive. Make checks payable to the Secretary of the Treasury, and please be especially generous if much of your income is derived from stock dividends.

If you donate, please let the Niagara Falls Reporter know, and we'll publish your name and the amount of your donation in a special "We Stand with Shrubco" section.

Our only ally in the marching to Baghdad fixation is the British, and they are getting severely cold feet. They are already demanding that UN weapons inspectors be given significantly more time to do their work.

The Bushies won't stand for that, and Prime Minister Blair will be in Washington to plead his case for caution, which will fall on deaf ears.

Mark your calendar.

If British forces join in an attack on Iraq without a specific authorization from the United Nations, Blair is toast. His own cabinet will lead the revolt.

Britain's Poet Laureate Andrew Motion is speaking out against the rush to bomb Iraq. He says leaders of the war rhetoric are hiding their true motivations and not being candid.

"It has much to do with oil, imperialism and a sort of strange father fixation," Motion told the British press.

And turning, as he should, to poetry to make the point, Motion wrote a 30-word poem he calls "Causa Belli." That's Latin for the "causes, motives or pretexts for war."

CAUSA BELLI
by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.


Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com.

Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com January 21 2003