Heading for $1 trillion in Iraq?

Ye gods. The House has now voted to give the Lame Duck President and the Pentagon another$162 billion for another year of warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The vote was 268 to 155.) Next step, the Senate. If it goes along with the House, Bush's Iraq war-and-occupation machine will have garnered over $650 billion since "Shock and Awe" in 2003.

Yes, there is money there for returning veterans, unemployment benefits and flood relief. But the bulk assures that the occupation of Iraq will continue to drag on with no set time for withdrawal. (Did I just hear an echo of John McCain's "one hundred years" statement?)

In the meantime, the number of U.S. troop deaths stands at 4,101 and the number of US wounded at somewhere between 30,00 and 100,00. The Just Foreign Policy people estimate Iraqi deaths at 1,225,898. (To learn more, go to www.antiwar.com/casualties and justforeignpolicy.org)

We all know that overt violence in Iraq has gone down. But more violence is smoldering around any corner. I don't expect that McCain and Lieberman will be going shopping in Baghdad anytime soon. Just this week: a car bomb in Baghdad killed 51 Iraqis, wounded 75, set about 20 shops on fire and razed a large building. An Iraqi TV journalist was shot to death in Mosul. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle hit a checkpoint in Baghad, killing a guard. Another car bomber hit a checkpoint in Baquba, killing a cop. The whole country (if one can call Shiite land, Sunni land and Kurd land a country) is broken up into religious and ethnic enclaves. Bush's monumental disaster remains monumentally disastrous.

Why can't a House and Senate majority stand up to "The Decider," especially when his approval rating (CBS, June 1) stands at 25%? A word Rep. Raul Grijalva used for fellow Democratss running away from decent immigration reform is also apt here. The word is "spineless."