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Thanks for the interesting and informative post, DoughtyOne. My first reaction is that the founders of this country would probably have drunk themselves to oblivion and vomited all over the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution if they had known that 200+ years down the road the United States of America would p!ss away billions of dollars and thousands of lives to establish and prop up a government in a foreign country in which the enshrinement of Islam as the state religion and a guarantee of "free" health care for all citizens are written into the country's constitution.

But the real basis for my post was to point out just how catastrophic the Iraq campaign has been from an economic standpoint. To get a sense of just how disastrous this thing has been (and as time goes on it is getting more and more difficult for the U.S. government to hide this harsh reality from the people of this country), consider this . . .

The military costs of the Iraq war -- which are enormous -- have been dwarfed by what has basically become a massive welfare program. Because the U.S. dollar is the basis of all economic activity in Iraq, the U.S. has effectively absorbed a 51st state -- with California's population, the dysfunctional business climate of Detroit, and all the cultural stability of Rwanda.

Just think about that for a moment, and then understand that this is exactly what has driven the value of the U.S. dollar into the toilet in the last few years.

That's exactly what I meant when I said it's becoming more obvious by the day that the 1970s are here again. The good news is that the next Ronald Reagan is only a few years away. The bad news is that we have to survive another Jimmy Carter first.

I appreciate what you are saying, but I do have to admit I see it differently. IMO, the great “S&L Fiasco II” is upon us, only this time it involves banking as well as S&Ls and other lending institutions.

Whoever in their right mind thought that no interest no down payment loans that ballooned in ten years were going to remain solvent should be tucked away in a nice padded cell, not so much for their protection as our own.

While Iraq is costing us, it isn’t what has undermined confidence in the dollar. The wobbly banking system is what has everyone concerned. People talk about bailing out home owners and that’s all cuddly and palatable, but it’s the big financial institutions that constructed those loans to make money that we’re desperate to prop up.

Those who executed these despicable loans are the ones who have gutted our economy. And now we have Qatar and other foreign nations buying into those institutions to help prop them up. Chalk this up as one more wonderful fruit off the Free Trade tree.

We have spent a lot of our treasure during other periods in our history, to rescue nations from tyrants. We survived them and thrived. I just think that we have an invincibility complex.

We conduct a war and then allow a despicable financial crisis to develop and then watch as China arms and...

We put too many eggs in too many baskets. We overextend for sure. I’m still not convinced Iraq is our undoing. It may be contributory, but we needn’t be in the situation we’re in, and I don’t see Iraq as the major cause you do.

I appreciate your respnse. You take care.