As with most good questions, it requires a reporter or journalist with minimum ability to ask it and we do not have many who are that talented.

Why is Anne Coulter's face staring at me wherever I go on this site? My eyes are actually hurting!

Of course it is. Duh.

The Iraq war has not been a wise investment and it may exacerbate our current economic problems and diminish our future prosperity. The current economic slowdown, however, has clearly been caused primarily by the collapse in the housing market, not by the war. I think a far more interesting question for McCain and other Republicans would be "What was the more important driver of economic growth during the Bush administration: the tax cuts or the housing bubble?" The answer to that question has to be "the housing bubble," despite what Republicans like to claim. Tax cuts may have provided some stimulus, but the primary driver of the economy since Bush has been president has been the rise in home prices and the related availability of consumer credit (credit made even cheaper and therefore more attractive to borrowers by Fed monetary policy). That wasn't a sound basis for real economic growth and we're paying the price now. The real question for our politicians is what happens after the correction and how do we create a more durable source of economic growth for the future?

I think it's a joke how Republicans keep talking about tax and spend Democrats. The Republican spend and spend record makes the Democrats look like Republicans. The Republicans are a fiscal trainwreck. If they were a household, they'd be on the verge of losing their house begging themselves for sub-prime relief!

Just look at their war of convenience in Iraq. The latest estimate is that the Iraq war alone will cost 3 to 5 trillion dollars, not to mention far more America lives than we lost in the 9/11 event which prompted the war. That's an abysmal rate of return on every count. That's orders of magnitude more than the $60 billion Republicans told us it would cost when they were selling the war. That's orders of magnitude higher than any number the Republicans are even trying to pin to the Democrats for anything. And the Republicans are ignoring the data, saying we can afford to be in Iraq for another hundred years.

Now Bush tells us we are not going into a recession. What a joke. And the Republican nominee for President, McCain, admits he also doesn't know squat about the economy.

It's beyond me why anyone would listen to the Republicans anymore. What's even more staggering is that after such a terrible record, the Republicans would be so arrogant as to harshly criticize anyone else on fiscal responsibility. The Republican electorate, their fast talking arrogant rude pundits like Rush and Coulter, and most of all their Republican leaders, need to be quiet and take a good long hard look at themselves.

In the meantime, let's bring in someone smart with a fresh approach. Let's bring in someone who is not going to spend all his energy fighting and tearing people down. Let's bring in someone who can bring us together to bring real change to the direction of America. That's what we need. That's our only hope for change. Otherwise it's status quo, and despite what the Republicans are telling us, status quo is looking pretty bad right now.

Obama '08. Yes we can!

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-02/29/content_7694954.htm

"WASHINGTON, Feb. 29 (Xinhua) -- The Iraq war will cost Americans between 3 trillion and 5 trillion U.S. dollars, including military spending, broader economic costs and decades of benefits and medical care for combat veterans, a Nobel prize-winning economist said.

In a testimony at the Congress Thursday, Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001 and a professor at Columbia University, gave his latest estimate of the war's economic impact, the Cox News service reported Friday.

The upper end of the estimate is nearly double what Stiglitz had projected just two years ago.

He attributed the dramatic increase to the continuing intensity of the war, which will be five years old by next month, and the likelihood that operations there would continue for at least another year.

The war's gravest toll has been paid in blood.

Fighting in Iraq has so far taken the lives of 3,973 U.S. troops and left nearly 29,300 wounded."

The $3 trillion war tab is just for Iraq; Tony Fratto, Bush shill, explained it all away last week by saying that it was a small price to pay for our security, in the wake of 9/11--unfortunately, nobody in the press gaggle told him that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The $3 trillion is a dumbsh*t tax that we and our children are going to be paying off for a long, long time, on behalf of all the wannabe tough guys and mouth-breathing simpletons who *had* to go make war on *somebody* after 9/11. Feel better, a**holes? Ironic, isn't it, that *you* are the fools who have thrown the country in the crapper...

btw, I look forward to Dean's response to the Stiglietz interview.

"Economic Slowdown"? This really does speak to a fundamental misunderstanding of the American economy under Bush.

The truth is that Bush's administration began with an induced recession and the collapse of the tech boom. Inevitably the tech boom was unsustainable, but there was a question as to whether it could be brought into a soft landing. However, the Bush administration was strictly 'old economy' and had little or no interest in the knowledge or tech economy, except under the most utilitarian purposes. I'll leave it to the tech visionairies to lament lost opportunities.

Instead, Bush's policy emphasis focused on the old traditional corporate oligopolies, and in particular on deconstricting these oligopolies. Enron was a notable result. The inevitable economic shifts were large transfers of wealth away from working and middle classes, and consolidation of elites, who also evaded tax burdens.

What did this lead to? Exacerbation of existing trends mainly. Middle and working class families found themselves taking two or three jobs per household to make ends meet. Their savings declined to zero. Illusory wealth was manufactured by inflation of housing prices and a deregulated approach to lending. But as I said, that was illusory wealth from start to finish.

Where does the Iraq war fit into this? Easy.

Everyone misses the point so far. It's energy prices. Oil went from 12 dollars a barrel to 103 dollars a barrel in eight years. This is solely due to the Iraq War and no other causes. Even with substantial intervention to cushion the impact of deformation of energy prices, that fundamental linchpin could not be evaded.

With energy shock moving through the world economy, and into the United States economy, a relatively artificial 'housing boom' could not be sustained. More to the point, the middle and working classes - overtaxed, vulnerable, stressed and already at its physical, emotional and financial limits simply doesn't have the wherewithal to keep the economy going.

Everyone misses the point so far. It's energy prices. Oil went from 12 dollars a barrel to 103 dollars a barrel in eight years.

Soaring medical costs made that a double whammy.

It's 3:00 am, and your children may be safe and asleep at home . . . but if you're smart you won't let 'em anywhere near the Whitehouse with bored ole Bill on the prowl . . .

It's threads like this that make me despair of America and Americans. How did the the flagship of the enlightenment fall so far and so low?

If anyone seriously thinks that hundred dollar oil prices have nothing to do with the Iraq War and Bush's middle east bungling, let them step forward.

One might argue that other factors are involved in rising oil prices, but the ugly truth is that if you take Bush out of the equation, its a completely different marketplace.

Overall, the discussion is limited. People assume that the performance of the United States economy is unrelated to the Iraq war. That in a larger sense, its unrelated to the military industrial complex. These are dubious propositions to say the least.

I thought I have been about as clear and non-evasive as possible. War spending helps to boost the economy in the short-term especially when the economy is weak -- as it was in 2003 and 2004. That means that Alan Greenspan would have LESS, and in not as much, reason to try to boost the economy with low rates because we were spending money on the war in Iraq. That means that if anything, the war restrained the growth of the housing bubble.

If someone wants to claim that the war somehow led to the bursting of the bubble, I think that would be an extremely hard case, but if it is true, then it would be one very positive thing that came from the war. The earlier the bubble bursts the better. We would have been better off it burst in 2005 than 2007, and much better off if it burst in 2003 or 2002. The longer it persists, the bigger it grows and the more money people eventually lose.

I don't think you can tell a plausible story that has the war as the cause of the bubble bursting, but that would be an argument for it having a good effect on the economy, not a bad effect.

Look, the war sucks and it is bad for the economy over the long-term, but that doesn't mean that we can blame everything we don't like on the war. I was pissed that the White Sox didn't win the World Series this year, but I can't blame the war in Iraq for that. Similarly, the war is not responsible for the housing bubble. Let's focus on the real villains -- the Fed, the Wall Street clowns, and the economists who are too dumb to see an $8 trillion bubble in front of their face.

Re: Do you think then that the policy of maintaining cheap credit wasn't at all related to the war and keeping the economy going despite the incredible amount of borrowing the government was doing?

The incredible amount of borrowing is mainly due to the Bush tax cuts, not Iraq. The federal budget went down the dumper even before 9-11 happened. Iraq may be frosting on the cake, but it doesn't come close to explaining the mess the economy is in.
What I see here is a desperate attempt by people who want the war to be the primary campaign issue to tie the war to what is fast becoming the overwhelming issue of this election year, the souring economy. Leave it alone. It is, and always has been, "the economy stupid". And while I don't wish for a bad economy (I live here too) if a bad economy helps elect lots of Democrats this year while the war fades to the back pages, that's a result I can easily live with.

Re: Oil went from 12 dollars a barrel to 103 dollars a barrel in eight years. This is solely due to the Iraq War and no other causes.

Iraq certainly plays a big part in that, but so does economic growth in China and India (and elsewhere), the shenanigans of Hugo Chavez and other oil-bearing dictators, and the entry of major-league speculators (Goldmann-Sachs etc.) into the oil futures market.

Re: but the ugly truth is that if you take Bush out of the equation, its a completely different marketplace.

Without the Iraq War oil would probably be about $70/bbl. Take the speculators out of the market and it might fall to around $50/bbl. That's still well over what it was eight years ago.