After four years, $500 billion spent and $100 billion about to be authorized, 3,200 U.S. lives, 53,000 wounded or mentally impaired U.S. troops, 4 million Iraqi refugees, a destroyed Iraq economy and oil fields – what now? I thank you and agree with the Bangor Daily News editorial “Bring the Peace” (March 17): “[Congress] must make peace as vigorously as it was willing to let the president make war.”

What will it take to have our senators vote to change course in Iraq? In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released on March 17, only 35 percent of the American public thinks we made a correct decision to invade Iraq. Our senators are supposed to represent us, yet I watched CSPAN as both voted this week against the Reid-Levin resolution which not only urged withdrawal of most combat troops (but not troops for training and protecting borders) by March 31, 2008, but also set benchmarks for the Iraqi government and a sensible plan for a diplomatic, economic and political strategy to try to bring stability to Iraq – similar to what the bipartisan Iraq Study Group proposed last December.

Each week the “surge” grows, from 21,500 to now over 30,000, along with it the request for more and more billions of dollars. Is the $100 billion just going through Congress now really for “troop support”? How much of it is for contractors who have wasted billions of our hard-earned tax dollars? Have any of those wasted billions been recovered and returned to the U.S. Treasury?

A Pentagon study released March 12 showed that, in addition to the over 23,000 U.S. troops physically wounded in Iraq, 56 percent of all soldiers are coming home with either mental or psychosocial problems that will be with them for years. Many of the physical injuries are so grave that the wounded will require constant care for the rest of their lives. Think of the terrible costs to the soldiers, their families and communities – not to even speak of the taxpayers. I know my brother came home with “battle fatigue” (now called post-traumatic stress disorder) from World War II – he never recovered.

What are the costs to America? We’ve lost credibility worldwide as a leader for world justice and supporter of international law. We did not have the right to invade Iraq because it was not posing an imminent threat to us, we lied before the United Nations, and we do not have a right under the Geneva Conventions to torture prisoners. We have lost the ability to repair our crumbling infrastructure: President Bush said he would veto a bill authorizing $1.3 billion to start to replace our deteriorating wastewater treatment plants because “we can’t afford it.” We’ve lost some of our most cherished civil rights – such as privacy for our mail, telephone and e-mail communications.

What could we have done with $600 billion to rebuild our economy in light of the loss of our industrial base and, with it, the loss of our invaluable middle class? What about our health system which produces results at the bottom of the industrialized world? What about the results from our educational system leaving our students unable to compete in so many academic areas with students from other countries? What about investing in energy efficiency and new energy fuels and technologies to reduce our dependence on oil? The Bush administration’s priorities are WRONG for America and Iraq.

What about Iraqis? CNN’s “This Week at War with John Roberts” (March 17) reported that Iraq used to have a viable economy and educated middle class. The war we started has led to 4 million refugees leaving their homes. Two million have moved away from Iraq and 2 million have relocated inside. Those that have left are the doctors, engineers, managers, businessmen and bureaucrats and many women and children whose husbands and fathers have been killed. Some of the women have had to become prostitutes in Syria as they lack any resources.

Estimates of how many Iraqis have died range from 65,000 to 850,000 (Iraq Body Count.com and Lancet study) from intertribal killings and U.S. forces. Our United States government does not keep any public records. So many of their homes have been bombed, so many have not had their electricity or running water restored. The unemployment rate in Iraq is very high. The Iraqi oil fields are not functioning.

The United States (“give me your tired and poor … yearning to be free” as it says on the Statue of Liberty) has let in fewer than 1,000 Iraqi refugees since 2003. We now pledge to let in 7,000 in 2007. The Iraqis who have worked for the Americans are under death threats if they stay in Iraq. Sweden has let in tens of thousands of refugees from this war, even though it opposed our invasion. The Bush administration’s priorities are WRONG for America and Iraq.

When will it end? In Vietnam we just finally left and chaos did not ensue, and the dominoes did not fall. It will take, as Gen. Petraeus said last week and the Iraq Study Group said in December, a political solution by Iraqis, not just a military one, for stability to be restored in Iraq. Let it begin now.

Pam Person is a resident of Orland.