Saddam Hussein must be flattered that the U.S. thought he was enough of a menace to justify spending $152 billion and sacrificing 1,042 soldiers' lives (and wounding 7,413 more). Of course, Bush didn't know the war would cost this much because he "miscalculated." The Congressional Budget Office didn't miscalculate, though; it estimated that war in Iraq could cost as much as $9 billion per month of fighting (and how many months have been peaceful?). But pesky, bipartisan congressional offices are always trying to dispute the claims of the president and his administration, which is probably why Bush said that "a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier ..."

Take, for example, the Congressional Research Services' claim that Dick Cheney's 433,333 unexercised stock options in Halliburton, the company that was awarded a "no-bid" contract in Iraq worth over $7 billion, legally constitute a "lingering financial interest" in the company. Of course, as Marlow's aunt reminds him in Heart of Darkness, "the labourer is worthy of his hire." 

But exactly what the Bush administration has labored for remains unclear. In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush cited the weapons grade uranium Iraq had obtained from Niger as a reason for going to war, but it turned out that the CIA had known, and told Bush, that no such transaction had occurred.  One Czech official reported a meeting between Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi diplomat, but the Sept. 11 commission has since found that the "available evidence does not support the original Czech report of a meeting" and "that Bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime." 

But we can all be reassured by Donald Rumsfeld's observation that "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence," at least until we start to wonder what the evidence of absence would actually be. The good news is that while we weren't fighting terrorists before, we almost certainly are now as foreign jihadists flock to the uncontrolled parts of Iraq to attack a conveniently located and especially incendiary U.S. target.

But why are we talking about this? As any Republican who is proud of the war's successes will tell you, John Kerry's vote to empower the president is roughly equivalent to the series of bad executive decisions George Bush has made to bring us to this point. Although if they're so proud, why do they try to share the credit? Kerry may have voted to allow the president to use force, but he certainly didn't privatize Iraq's public industries and introduce foreign competition almost immediately. One Harper's journalist who spent a year with Iraqi insurgents wrote that the resistance was financed in part by Iraqi businessmen for whom instability is the only protection against foreign competitors. 

Of course, these businessmen don't realize that foreign competition roots out domestic inefficiency, but then again neither did Bush when he imposed a tariff to protect American steel companies from their foreign counterparts, saying, "An integral part of our commitment to free trade is our commitment to enforcing trade laws to make sure that America's industries and workers compete on a level playing field." Want to see a flip flop? Look at how different the tools that Bush uses to support American democracy are from those that he uses in Iraq. 

Speaking of bad executive decisions, John Kerry also wasn't the one to show Iraqis the extent of their autonomy by refusing to allow Iyad Alawi to pardon members of the insurgency. And when the Iraqi soccer coach called talk of a free Iraq propaganda, he certainly wasn't responding to anything John Kerry said. But I hate to be glib when the lives of more than 8,000 men and women have been changed irrevocably or ended and the government is projecting deficits of more than $400 billion for the next 10 years. 

And the situation in Iraq only grows worse: A national intelligence estimate compiled by the CIA in July suggested that the elections scheduled for January might result in civil war. The Bush administration itself, despite an optimistic facade, has requested that $3 billion be taken away from reconstruction efforts, where less than $1 billion has been spent so far, to help pay for the rising cost of security. Meanwhile, our national security has fallen by the wayside. Bush has cut $800 million from the budget of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Domestic Preparedness, and according to the Congressional Quarterly, the nation still has no "unified terrorist watch list." And has anyone heard news of Osama Bin Laden lately? 

But back to Iraq. Bush now says he's doing everything John Kerry has proposed to stabilize the region. But regardless of his intentions, does Bush have the credibility to accomplish Kerry's goals? The European press criticized his recent speech before the U.N. General Assembly relentlessly, and The Times of London ran a cartoon that depicts Bush saying, "Friends, our policy in Iraq is dedicated towards a successful election. Mine." Bush has barely acknowledged the negative consequences of the Iraq war. Of the 1,042 dead soldiers, not one coffin or funeral has been shown on television or even photographed because Bush has banned such a display. And the most ironic thing is that we know North Korea has nuclear weapons and hostile intentions, and yet we don't invade for just these reasons. But that makes sense, because we all know that, other than Bush, only Saddam has the cojones to launch a pre-emptive attack. Right?