You've hit the nail on the head, Barry...

The real costs of this war cannot easily be measured... Every empire in history was brought down by over reaching... I'm not confident that the US hasn't set in motion a chain on events that will bring it to its knee... The working class is just about there now...

I just think of the set of domestic priorities that faced our country in 2003 and just how much further along our country would be if Bush had turned his attention toward them... Now that opportunity is lost... The next administartion is going to have to have the balls to clean this crap up and it ain't going to be pretty... What really bugs me is that none of the candidates for president are offering a holistic plan for cleaning up the mess... Okay, Dennis Kucinich, is close but he doesn't get any microphone time so no one really hears his vision...

The rest, Ron Paul and my guy, Obama, aren't articulating their views of the big-clean-up-picture which, of course, will have to happen before we can talk about big ticket things such as nationalized health care and energy independence...

Yes, the cost of this war can't be measured strickly by how much we spent in dollars to invade and occupy Iraq...

B~