Letter: We’re all paying for president’s mistakes

Friday, Oct. 12, 2007 | 7:24 a.m.

I've been reading with interest about the idea of a "war tax" to pay for our involvement in Iraq.

However legitimate it is fiscally to ponder such an idea at this point, it is difficult to get around the fact that our country's citizens would be paying for the mistakes of one of the most suspect presidents this country has ever had the misfortune of enduring. I wish we could just completely get out of Iraq, but the reality is we are stuck there holding up a house of cards indefinitely.

This is not what the administration sold to the public six years ago when the Taliban was initially overthrown and there was to be a "covert" type of warfare based on intelligence and special forces against the terrorists. That would have made sense. Invading Iraq never did.

The "war on terror" was supposed to be about capturing Osama bin Laden and eradicating terrorist factions in the Middle East and around the world. It was not supposed to be about sending this nation's bravest and most honorable into an open-ended killing zone in the name of an experiment in democracy and an exercise of ego.

Revolution comes from within, and when the Islamic world is ready for democracy, if ever, only then will it become a reality. Meanwhile, bin Laden has never been captured, there are more known al-Qaida operatives than ever, thousands of American lives have been lost and others have returned from Iraq horribly injured, and the administration is provoking another misadventure in Iran.

Maybe if the government ends up levying a "war tax" it should be called the "paying for poor decisions tax." That's essentially what it would be.

Kirk Moll, Las Vegas