The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded - 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come.

The war in Iraq has been very, very expensive - partly because the Administration tried to keep the apparent costs down. But the benefits have been elusive at best - partly because the ostensible reasons for going war were unconnected with reality - no weapons of mass destruction, no connections with 9/11.

If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here.

The Bush administration has been doing everything it can to hide the huge number of returning veterans who are severely wounded - 17,000 so far including roughly 20 percent with serious brain and head injuries. Even the estimate of $500 billion ignores the lifetime disability and healthcare costs that taxpayers will have to spend for years to come.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

The national debt will have increased by approximately 50% in just eight years! We will have created a new unfunded entitlement - disability and health care benefits for the huge number of disabled veterans returning from the Iraq war.

But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.