Francisco Tharp

General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, met with the Senate today. About a month after the 5-year anniversary of the war in Iraq he said our military has made “significant but uneven security progress,” and he called that progress “fragile and reversible.” And as I listened to him recommend an open-ended presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, I started wondering about the incredible cost of war.

It seems funny to me to put dollar signs on a theme as grotesquely personal — and human — as war. But because war, just like any major endeavor these days, takes a hefty bankroll, I’m going to. The cost of the war between the U.S. and militant factions in Iraq is not a uniquely Western story. But we’re playing–or should I say, paying?–our part. Out of the $509.5 billion that nationalpriorities.org estimates has been spent nationally on the war to date, taxes in Western states have paid about $107 billion, or 21 percent.

Read on to see how much taxpayers in each Western state have paid for the military action:

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

When the U.S. Army established the 235,000-acre Pinon Canyon Maneuver site in the 1980s, it used eminent domain to take property. Now the Army wants 400,000 acres more, and a group called Not 1 More Acre — made up of ranchers in southeastern Colorado –  is afraid they’ll use eminent domain to take it.

The group has filed an open records claim to get an accounting of plans for the site, which the Army wants to expand in order to “accurately simulate anticipated, actual, combat conditions” in the Middle East.

A 2008 federal budget law signed by President Bush in January contains a one-year moratorium on the Army spending any money on the Pinon Canyon expansion. The amendment was sponsored by Colorado Representatives Marilyn Musgrave (R) and John Salazar (D).

But another law passed by Congress, the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, contains an amendment which requires Army officials to deliver a report on why it wants a larger Pinon Canyon, the effects of an expansion on the community and other training options. That clause was proposed by Colorado Senators Wayne Allard (R) and Ken Salazar (D).

Rancher Mack Louden said the Army should observe the one-year moratorium. “They are ignoring all the voices of democracy opposed to the Pentagon’s plan, from the community and county level, through the state Legislature and right up to the U.S. Congress,” he said, according to a report in the Pueblo Chieftain.

See High Country News’ October 2007 story, Eminent domain’s poster children, for more.