Sarah Failin

To the diatribe about Congress being required to declare war for troops to be deployed:

Checks and balances. The executive branch does contain the Commander in Chief who is tasked with the defense of the United States under the Constitution. Congress has the ability to deny him funding for said ventures should they choose.

Claiming congresspersons pull off the "I didn't vote for the war, I just provided funding for it" is elitist snobbery of the collective intelligence of voters of the same level as "mothers with children out of wedlock or marital woes." In any case, it's not consistent with the 2004 elections.

I'm glad after 6 posts we've agreed we didn't spend $2 trillion to fight the Taliban. Your graciousness, as always, is overwhelming. Thank you for using correct numbers for appropriate conclusions rather than fudging numbers to make a point. That's refreshing.

A cost-benefit analysis over the question "should troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan?" cannot be done. Factors are missing. Some can never be known. Specifically, we can know what it cost in lives and dollars, but we do not and cannot know the costs of not doing anything. Further, we cannot know the costs and benefits that will follow 2010 and beyond. You have your opinion. It's a fine one. But you can't prove it. So pound the table.