NINETEENTH ADDRESS TO CITY COUNCIL (Re: A Resolution To Impeach)

June 17th.

Mayor, council members, good morning.

Here's some information you might not hear from the mainstream media:

More Americans have died in Iraq than in all US conflicts put together since Vietnam.

Following a long tradition in America's wars, most of those who have given their lives came from poor, rural areas.

More than 15,500 US Soldiers have been wounded.

The number of Iraq Veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is 300,000. Many veterans complaining of battlefield stress are now being given antidepressants, such as prosac and zoloft by army doctors and thrown back to the battlefield.

The number of troops stop-lossed: 58,000.

The number of troops deployed after being declared medically unfit: 43,000.

The Iraq War is costing about $4,500 per second. Per second.

The direct cost of US military operations, not including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans, already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

The projected total bill for the Iraq war is estimated at 3 trillion dollars. This is just the cost for the US. It does not include the cost to Iraq or the rest of the world. This figure comes from Joseph Stiglitz, the chief economist at the World Bank, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics.

Of the total Iraq War spending approved to date, our share, Fort Worth's share, is about 1 billion dollars. For that amount of money we could have built 12,210 affordable housing units.

So as we think about helping the homeless in this community, perhaps we should consider the fortune we've thrown away on a war based on lies. And how much more we stand to lose every day, every second, that it continues.

The percentage of U.S. Combat troops who are Latino: 17.5.

The percentage of the US population that is Latino: 14.8.

The pay per day for a US Army sergeant in Iraq: $71.53.

The pay per day for General Petraeus: $493.15.

The pay per day for a Blackwater “Protective security specialist”: $1,221.62. Taxpayer's money for mercenaries.

As of January 1, of this year, George W. Bush, during a time of war, spent all or part of 908 days—36% of his time—on vacation or at retreat places. That's two-and-a-half years of his presidency spent kicking back.

Can anyone imagine Franklin Roosevelt spending two-and-a-half years of his presidency vacationing during World War II?

The question is why is it so unthinkable to send a simple request to Congress asking for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney?

Thank you.