It's sink or swim for school kids - Bullets vs. Schoolbooks

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/03/its_sink_or_swim_for_school_kids/

<snip>
Everyone says teaching our children is a noble task, but the costs of the occupation are now at a level where it makes any claims of caring about public schools a joke. Halliburton, the oil and soldier services company once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, already has scored $1.7 billion in no-bid, no-ceiling contracts off the war. That would fund the Boston public schools for three years.

The $60 billion cost of the invasion and its immediate aftermath dwarfs the $36 billion American schools were able to spend on construction in 2001. While the war-related work allowed Halliburton to post a profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year after nearly $500 million of losses last year, the cumulative debt of the nation's school districts rose to $202 billion in 2001.

If the cost of rebuilding Iraq surpasses $411 billion, that will exceed spending for all the nation's public school students in 2001. All for a war that began with lies, ended with the discovery of no weapons of mass destruction and no proof of a revamped nuclear weapons program, and is continuing with the chaos of car bombings and sniper attacks. The commitment to rebuild Iraq is so serious that the White House is giving Bechtel a contract boost of $350 million, sending that company's war work over $1 billion.

As for the rebuilding of education, President Bush's vaunted Leave No Child Behind program, which promises students that they can transfer out of poorly performing schools, is so underfunded that in Chicago there are only 1,000 seats for the 240,000 students who could qualify. Less than half of 1 percent can qualify.

[damnraddem]

1. Hey, this is the U.S. -- we don't have to choose!

Whether or not they get books, those students can get bullets right there in their neighborhood schools.