SOUNDING OFF:

Everyone undoubtedly remembers where they were and how they heard about the despicable attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon seven years ago today. The first plane crashed into the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m. EST. It was a quarter to six here on the West Coast, and Vic and I were still sleeping. My brother George called from Indiana as soon as he heard the news.

At first it looked like a horrible accident, but a second plane crashed 18 minutes later. By 9:45 am, a third plane crashed into a helicopter landing pad and careened into the Pentagon. A fourth plane went down in Pennsylvania when the passengers fought back against the terrorists.

America was under attack, but we didn’t know then who the enemy was or why the attacks had occurred.

Within a day, we learned that a friend of a friend of ours was on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon. She had finished her scientific work at the National Institutes of Health in Washington earlier than expected, and had changed flights to return home to her family sooner. She never made it.

Not counting the 19 terrorists who died that day, 2,998 people were killed in the four plane crashes and the collapse of the buildings.

A U.S. counterattack was inevitable, but who should be attacked? No one stepped up to take credit for the hit. When the enemy is an ideology rather than a country, it makes the situation more complicated. But soon the perpetrators were sniffed out, and we went to war in Afghanistan to hit Al Qaeda. If we had had rockets on our remote-controlled Predator drones back then, we might have taken out Osama bin Laden as he traveled to and from his cave in Tora Bora. Too bad that didn’t happen, because before we knew it, we were bogged down in a never-ending war in Iraq. Iraq? How in the hell did we end up in Iraq?

We invaded Iraq supposedly to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. But there weren’t any. There was supposed to be a link to Al Qaeda, and invading Iraq was supposed to help eliminate terrorists. But instead, many authorities say our invasion of Iraq created even more terrorists.

On the eve of our war with Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld estimated the war would cost “only” about $50 billion to $60 billion, much of which was going to be paid for by other countries. That certainly wasn’t true either. Seven years later, the price tag for the operating costs alone has reached $800 billion. Privatizing the war has been expensive, with no-bid contracts and private security guards earning up to $1,222 a day.

I’m now reading a book by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes called “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The true cost of the Iraq conflict.” It is so chock full of statistics that it’s hard reading. But it’s important stuff. The authors point out that there are hidden costs to the war, such as death payments to families of deceased soldiers at $500,000 per soldier, health costs for disabled soldiers, costs to our economy, and interest on the bonds being floated to pay for this war. Some day, taxpayers are going to have to pay, even if it isn’t coming out of our wallets now.

The authors of “The Three Trillion Dollar War” estimate that is how much it will cost us if we pull out by 2012: $3 trillion. And there’s no guarantee that a pullout will happen by then. John McCain says we could be there for 100 years. Heaven help us if that happens.

The monthly “burn rate” for this war is currently $16 billion per month, and that’s just the operating cost of the war, not all of the continuing long-term costs that will be incurred in caring for soldiers with mental disabilities and physical injuries, or interest on the bonds. Not that we begrudge veterans their well-deserved benefits, but the U.S has already spent more than $50 billion on Gulf War disability benefits.

While 3,000 people from 90 countries were killed in the attacks on 9/11, nearly 4,000 U.S. troops have died in the subsequent war, and more than 65,000 have been wounded or injured.

There comes a time when the cost of something is too dear. It cannot be sustained. We don’t need to lose any more U.S. soldiers.

Our advice is don’t send warmongers to Washington. According to Debbie Cook’s website for her bid for a congressional seat, “the invasion of Iraq was a tragic mistake, and has severely impacted our ability to pursue Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” And as for foreign oil, she says, “Government will never resolve oil independence by military means. To make our nation safer and more secure, there needs to be a national goal of reducing oil consumption by 30% by 2015.”

That’s just two of the reasons why we’re voting for Debbie Cook for Congress, not Dana Rohrabacher.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and the Natural Perspectives columnists for the Independent.