The Costs of War
by Bill Moyers
PBS.org
Friday, 18 October, 2002

"Mr. Bush is amassing a mighty American armada in the Middle East - incredible firepower. He has to know that even a clean war -- a war fought with laser beams, long range missles, high flying bombers, and remote controls -- can get down and dirty, especially for the other side."

Iraq is not Vietnam, but war is war. Some of you will recall that I was Press Secretary to Lyndon Johnson during the escalation of war in Vietnam. Like the White House today, we didn't talk very much about what the war would cost. Not in the beginning. We weren't sure, and we didn't really want to know too soon, anyway.
If we had to tell Congress and the public the true cost of the war, we were afraid of what it would do to the rest of the budget -- the money for education, poverty, Medicare. In time, we had to figure it out and come clean. It wasn't the price tag that hurt as much as it was the body
bag. The dead were coming back in such numbers that LBJ began to grow morose, and sometimes took to bed with the covers pulled above his eyes, as if he could avoid the ghosts of young men marching around in his head. I thought of this the other day, when President Bush spoke of the loss of American lives in Iraq. He said, "I'm the one who will have to look the mothers in the eye.". . . .

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