Paying for the mercenaries

How often do average Americans stop to consider that they are the ones paying for Bush's mad oil adventure in Iraq? To the tune of about $333,000,000 a day.

A sizeable hunk of that money is going to the mercenaries of Blackwater. The Bush government now pays $1,222 per day for each one of those guys, $445,000 a year, more than 600% the cost of an equivalent US soldier. From 2001 to 2006, the federal government has paid Blackwater over $1 billion.

So what has that billion dollars purchased? According to a NY Times article Monday on a report given to the House oversight committee, "Reckless, shoot-first guards who (are) not always sober and (do) not always stop to see who or what was hit by their bullets," That same article says, "Guards working in Iraq for Blackwater USA have shot innocent Iraqi civilians and have sought to cover up the incidents, sometimes with the help of the State Department."

And now the gutless wonders of Capitol Hill are almost surely going to give Bush another 190 billion war dollars--for Iraq and Afghanistan, but so far the Iraq war/occupation by itself has cost at least 450 billion dollars. Anyone reading this already knows about the ghastly death toll, which as of today includes 3,808 US troops.

In the meantime, the eyes of the nation seem fixed on the ever-more-pathetic Britney Spears. There's just not enough time, I guess, to concentrate on upping the heat on Congress to cut off Bush and Cheney's war bucks and bring the troops home.