I think that both the neo-cons and the Foggy Bottom Crew had plans for the Iraq war to pay for itself with lowered oil prices and lots of juicy contracts for oil companies.

This is a popular idea, usually followed by a comment along the lines of “that didn’t really work out for them”. But there is another possibility, which is that they weren’t interested in having it pay for itself from the point of view of America as a whole: as things turned out, quite a few people (mentioning no-one connected to Halliburton) got rich from the contracts for “rebuilding” Iraq, while quite a few other people (mentioning no-one with a family name not unlike “shrub”) made lots of money when the price of oil went up. From the perspective of the sponsors and shareholders of Bushco, the Iraq war looks to have been hugely profitable. OK, the peonstaxpayers have lost the odd pennytrillion dollars, but they’re not rich enough to be worth worrying about anyway….

My granddaddy was from Indiana, but converted to a Canuck, so would I be guilty of being a traitor or an apostate?

I think that both the neo-cons and the Foggy Bottom Crew had plans for the Iraq war to pay for itself with lowered oil prices and lots of juicy contracts for oil companies. The neocons wanted to simply privatize and plunder Iraq’s oil after turning Iraq into a happy flower petal tossing democracy. The State Department was a bit more realistic. They wanted to install a new dictator, let them “keep” their oil, and do most of the oil bidness under the table.

Either way, there was some expectation that these plans would defray a large part of the costs of the war. How wrong they were. And even if the oil companies got the contracts they wanted (and to an extent they have, though it took a long time) how can we be sure that the revenue would be taxed in such a way that the government costs in blood and treasure were covered?

Bachmann demanding a million dollars for each dead soldier’s family is just crazy. That’s a purely punitive measure. How could we possibly do such a thing to a people and government that have initiated no use of force against us?

Also I feel screwed by the title, I was expecting a quote more along the lines of “I realise now that I’m wildly unpopular and spectacularly unqualified so I withdraw from the race”.

Well not EXPECTING, hoping maybe