You decide: Iraq — right or wrong?

Progress for America, Inc. ("PFA"), a right wing "issue advocacy" organization, is running a series of TV ads in Minnesota and perhaps elsewhere under the banner MidwestHeroes.com and the aegis of the Progress for America Voter Fund. The TV ads feature three servicemen talking about the progress the U.S. is making in Iraq.

Lest the differentiation among these groups sounds confusing, Progress for America, Inc. is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit and the Progress for America Voter Fund is a section 527 nonprofit. Donations to both groups are not tax deductible.

(For more info on the PFA, see this report from Public Citizen and its website, stealthpacs.org. For more info on 527 advocacy groups, see this article in the Washington Post. One of the largest contributions to the PFA has been Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton's at least $2.6 million.)

Columnist Nick Coleman of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has weighed in on the issue, as has the blog Power Line.

The ad is deceptive in a number of ways, including implying that there was a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda prior to the war. In fact, al Qaeda had little or no influence in Iraq prior to the war, and today is just one of the groups fighting the U.S. presence there.

For more info, see "Who are the insurgents in Iraq?" from the BBC and WCCO-TV's report "Reality Check: Iraq War Ad".

We will never know what would have happened had the U.S., the U.K. and their partners not attacked Iraq in 2003. But the questions we can ask ourselves now are:

• Is the war worth the over 18,000 American dead, wounded and permanently maimed?
  
• Is it worth the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and injuries?
• Is it worth the $2 trillion price tag (roughly $26,800 per family of four), as predicted by some economists?
• Is it worth the cost to America's standing in the world?
• Has the war advanced world peace?

Before going to war to war in Iraq, if the President had said, "This war will lead to over 2,200 American deaths and more than 16,000 American wounded; it will cost each man, woman and child in the country as much as $6,700 apiece; and chances are we will neither catch Osama bin Laden nor wipe out al Qaeda," would America have supported him?

You decide.

LP