IRAQ - The Costs To USA.

The course in Iraq has so far cost over 2,700 US lives, 100 Iraqi lives a day, and about $300 bn spent since 2003. It a course, which, according to the leaked consensus estimate of the US intelligence community, has made Iraq a primary recruitment vehicle for the next generation of violent extremists and weakened the global fight against terror.

President Bush says Iraq is the central battleground in the war against terror. But the intelligence agencies suggest that if this is the case, it is only because the war has made it so. Intelligence czar John Negroponte puts it delicately when he says that there have been some notable successes, but that there is still much to be done in the war against terrorism. But the intelligence estimate seems to agree with bin Laden, who said on a videotape released last January that the number of fighters was increasing and Iraq had become "a point of attraction and recruitment".

In New York recently, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told Newsweek Bush assured him that he would continue to support the Iraqi people and remain in Iraq until the Iraqis ask him to leave. In public, Bush stands his ground adamantly. But in private, one learns from The Washington Post, he is sometimes given to tears when he meets with a war widow. In one case, a woman met in private with the president and broke into tears as she talked of her two fatherless children. Bush kept repeating, "I am so sorry for your loss". At one point his eyes welled up. But when she pleaded with him to bring the troops home, he said only, "We see things differently".