Thanks for a website with text that can be read by eyes older than puberty. Some sites have gray text on a gray background, or white text on black, or light blue text on flourescent red. These cause seizures, I’m quite sure.
At the risk of feeding the troll, I would ask Mr. Gonzales what the cost might have been had Bush simply let Saddam continue with the daily, hourly, weekly, constant repeated violations of the ceasefire that had suspended the active hostilities of the first Gulf War in 1991.
I’ve seen several careful analyses of the single attack on the World Trade Center (September 11, 2001) estimating total costs on the order of a trillion dollars within the first year after the attacks. These include the initial attack —
• lives lost immediately, insurance benefits to victim beneficiaries
• construction costs of the buildings & structures
• loss of income from so many acres of the highest-revenue producing commercial rental space in the country
• equipment, records, business disruptions to the companies located in the WTC
• loss & replacement costs of hundreds of rescue, fire, police vehicles and equipment, buses, taxis and privately-owned vehicles
• the extended recovery effort for victim remains (I know there were hundreds of firefighters and professional rescue workers and police who volunteered their time for this. It doesn’t mean there was no cost…)
• the extended forensic analysis
• cost of transport of rubble and crushed vehicles, etc.
… and the cascade of resulting costs and expenditures —
• lost revenues to airlines from millions of passengers abandoning air travel
• the cost of enhanced passenger & baggage inspections at hundreds of airports
• the loss of business for travel agencies, hotels & resorts, vehicle rental services
• unemployment and other services for folks laid of as a result of the stresses on various related industries, etc.
Oh, and the millions of dollars pissed away by the Democratic Senators and Congresscritters, with all the thousands of aides, secretaries, researchers and interns, setting up the Kleig lights, cameras and microphones to hold thousands of hours of testimony trying to pin the blame on George Bush for everything bad that ever happened in the history of the world. Small potatoes.
A trillion dollars for ONE terrorist incident. That’s a thousand times one billion dollars, or One MILLION times a MILLION DOLLARS!
Remember, Saddam had been violating the ceasefire (from Gulf War I) for ten years, and that President Clinton had sent U.S. and Coalition forces into Iraq on Six DIFFERENT Occasions during his two terms Deep into Iraq to bomb, strafe, and attack Iraqi military forces. How much did THOSE military assaults cost? How’s come Nobody on the Left EVER questioned or criticized Clinton for sending U.S. military forces to attack Iraq?
Morons.
