What Price the Bush Vision? (February 12, 2005)

    The American Physical Society's Bob Park published the following item in his weekly column, What's New.

PROLIFERATION: TAUNTING IS ONLY AGAINST THE RULES IN THE NFL [National Football League].
Let's see if we've got this right: based on unfounded rumors of nuclear weapons in Iraq, the U.S. committed itself to a war that has so far cost the lives of more than 2,000 American troops and another 10,000 wounded.  Perhaps 18,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, and more than 6,000 military.  This carnage has cost us $153 [A$195] billion, and there's no end in sight.  Although he had no weapons of mass destruction, we're told the Iraq war is justified because Sadam is a really bad guy.  Kim Jong Il is no sweetheart either, and N. Korea is dancing in the end zone with its nukes.

Putting it another way, on balance could that US$153 billion have been better spent and without the loss of those 24,000 Iraqis and thousands non-Iraqi "peace keepers"?