Seriously. Let's just add the charge to everybody's taxes next year, a nice little line-item. Total costs of the war in Iraq will soon be $500 billion, to date, and with 100 million Americans filing tax returns each year (the actual number is somewhat higher, but for the life of me I can't find it), that comes to about $5000 a taxpayer. (And I'm just talking about the actual up front defense costs - the real cost of the war is estimated at $2 trillion dollars, that's four times what we're paying for the defense side of it, so that makes the real cost to taxpayers around $20,000.)



We're paying for it anyway, why not put it in our tax returns so that we're forced to see exactly how much the Republicans' little patriotic venture in Iraq is costing every American taxpayer. Most Americans have no idea what the costs of this war are, in lives, in money, in national prestige. But the one thing we can show, quite personally, is the cost in dollars.



The Iraq war is the biggest tax increase in American history. I'd love to see someone amend the tax code and require a line-item on all of tax forms adding $5,000. Then see how long the war goes on for.