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Iraq war's influence The first 31 items in the listing above are but a sampling for the horrors of Iraq during the past two weeks as listed on icasualties.org, a non-governmental web site dedicated to listing the news from Iraq. There are thousands of other such headlines. There are those who believe the daily infliction of violence there cannot help but have an impact on a culture in America that is creating a diminished view of the value of human life. Was it a factor in the mind of the South Korean student who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech University campus Monday? I am not qualified to make that judgment, but it does appear to me that the daily blitz of headlines from the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe may very well have such a negative impact on some, particularly the troubled or unstable. The reality of the Iraq Coalition Casualties web site is reason for President Bush to change courses in Iraq and begin working toward an exit strategy that will get our people home. His surge is not the solution. There must be some consequences if the leaders in Iraq do not step up to the plate and show some progress. Benchmarks must be set and be met within a certain time frame. If they are not met we must begin to disengage. Unfortunately it does appear that we are the problem, not the solution. I believe this war has cost us much more in international disrespect than did Vietnam. The world rallied around us after 9/11. We could have successfully led an international coalition in a real war against terror. Instead we squandered it all by focusing on Saddam Hussein who didn't possess WMD, had no involvement in 9/11 and was propped up by us in the 1980s and in his war with Iran. Saddam would have never let the terrorists into Iraq for fear they would someday topple him. As terrible as he was, he remained a buffer against Iran, the most dangerous regime in the Middle East. We will end up spending two to three trillion dollars on Iraq...and what have we accomplished? We have disrupted the Middle East and provoked it closer to a regional conflict. We have destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq, presided over the death of over 50,000 of its people and watched as two million of its people have had to flee their country. We have seen billions of dollars stolen from under our nose, most by our own corporations and contractors and there is less oil being produced than when we arrived. It has now cost us over 3,300 men and women in uniform and another 30,000 wounded, many with severe injuries.
In short this war is a total disaster and those who took us there on false pretenses ought to be held responsible. I know we cannot leave immediately or without a plan. It is time for the President to spend as much thought on getting us out as he did getting us in.
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