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The Iraq War was planned for two reasons: to prosecute a quick and non life threatening occupation, and to establish a permanent location in the Middle East for American Strategic Military and Oil interests. The idea was that, on the surface, we would get rid of a horrible dictator and earn the grateful acceptance of the Iraqi majority. The Iraqi majority would welcome us, our military bases, our protection, and would repay us with oil.

The American oil and gas interests would actually make the profit, once the incredible diversion of our national treasure was restored, but as long as gas and oil prices did not rise, no one would care. Meanwhile, the Auto industry could continue on it's same path, avoiding changes in their designs and marketing and selling gas guzzling monsters.

We all know how it really went. We watched in horror as the situation turned into the stuff of our worst nightmares: a modern version of Vietnam, but with worse damage to Iraq and to our servicemen and our treasure. We also watched in horror as the magnitude of the diversion of national treasure from badly needed maintenance of our infrastructure to the worsening debacle in Iraq became known to us, despite allowing the most criminal, secretive, belligerent and threatening administrations in US history to go on for two terms. The young people have a term for this: "We got played."

Our bridges have deteriorated to alarming levels. America has 592,473 bridges. Nationwide, 155,144 bridges, or 26.2 percent are either obsolete or are functionally deficient. For New York, the percentage is 37.5. In Michigan, the number is 27.9. 1

In 2001, the US had 655 miles of transit tunnels, 28 percent of which were considered to be substandard. 2 Yet the most massive movement of material in the history of America was already being considered, as there were already plans for the invasion of Iraq. The secretive "energy" meetings, where the corporate energy interests, but not the public or it's representatives, had been invited to secret discussions that never saw the light of day under the increasingly stubborn and belligerent atmosphere in Washington DC.

Every facet of our national infrastructures, from our physical plants to our national treasures, have had cutbacks, projects put on hold, and staffing cut in order to finance the Iraq war and other hastily and poorly established agencies to combat the so called "war on terror", which included agencies and measures at home, but which had far more assets diverted to an unnecessary war in Iraq that has gone on for eight years.

We have spent more to build permanent bases in Iraq, and to move an incredible volume of assets to supply those bases. When our Army goes, our Army's stuff goes with it. Now, one of the largest moves of material in the history of the world is going on in order to retrieve some of those assets before we leave Iraq to fend for itself, worse off than it was before we intervened there. 3

At home, all of the peacetime plans for better roads, to repair crumbling public schools and public hospitals, and to build light rail in order to relieve traffic have been cut back. Our infrastructure has always included our economy, which is in shambles for a variety of reasons, including the failure of the Iraq War to pay for itself with oil.

We did not get the oil revenue to replace the funds that were diverted from our own infrastructure, because Iraq's oil infrastructure is in shambles. So yes, spending on Iraq has cost us a decade of advancement and repair of our own infrastructure, with no restoration of funds in sight.

1. MSNBC: State By State Bridges

2. Public Roads Magazine

3. Asia Times

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth M. Young.
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