Washington, D.C. - The recent explosion of muckraking among Republicans and Democrats in the race for president is a national disgrace, says the Libertarian Party. "The surge of muckraking in the presidential campaigns of the two major parties is an embarrassment and disservice to our country," says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory.

"While our soldiers are dying overseas and our economy is grinding to a halt, Republicans and Democrats would rather debate fashion and relationships," says Cory. "Reading the Drudge Report has become like reading a supermarket tabloid. Aren't there more important issues to discuss rather than what Obama wears or John McCain's private life? It's time to focus on real issues that impact the everyday lives of Americans, and get over this pathetic locker-room drama."

The Libertarian Party calls for a return back to the political issues, and urges candidates to avoid distractions that do nothing to better the nation. The Party refers to the photos circulated by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign that show rival-candidate Barack Obama dressed in traditional Somali attire during a 2006 visit to Kenya, and the debate over John McCain's alleged relationship with a female lobbyist.

"If the Republicans and Democrats won't talk about how to fix this country, then the Libertarian Party will," says Libertarian Party National Media Coordinator Andrew Davis. "America deserves better than muckraking and personal smear-campaigns. Perhaps if Republicans and Democrats focused on policy and not theatrics, our economy would be booming and our troops would be home from Iraq."

One war appears to be going well for the United States and its allies these days: the drug war.

That was the lead in dozens of U.S. newspapers in response to a June 2007 United Nations report claiming that U.S. drug policy has led to a substantial decline in illicit drug use. Chances are the author of the story hadn’t read a copy of Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

He ought to.

Written by a pair of Appalachian State associate professors – Matthew Robinson and Renee Scherlen – Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics seeks to provide an objective, “fair assessment of America’s drug war” since the passage of the 1988 federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act. (The law, passed by Congress at the height of the 1980s drug-war Zeitgeist, created the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy – known colloquially as the “drug czar’s” office – and pronounced, “It is the declared policy of the United States Government to create a Drug-Free America by 1995.”)

Their assessment is nothing short of scathing.

Since the ONDCP’s founding in 1989, “trends in drug use, drug treatment, deaths attributed to drug use, emergency-room mentions of drug use, drug availability, drug purity, and drug prices are inconsistent with the goals of [the federal government],” the authors assert. “Yet, during this same time period, funding for the drug war grew tremendously and costs of the drug war expanded as well.”

Of course, such a critical appraisal of U.S. drug policy is hardly unique. What sets Robinson and Scherlen’s evaluation apart is their methodology. Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics consists primarily of the authors’ evaluation of the federal anti-drug agency’s annual National Drug Control Strategies. These reports, issued by the ONDCP at the beginning of each year, outline the agency’s policy objectives (“Stop [illicit drug] use before it starts; heal America’s drug users; [and] disrupt the [illicit drug] market.”) and, in theory, provide statistical “proof” to Congress and the public of the drug war’s ongoing success.

Under close scrutiny, however, it is troublingly apparent that ( a ) the agency is failing to achieve its stated goals, and ( b ) the drug czar’s office is manipulating and falsifying statistics in its public reports in order to claim successes that are not warranted.

Robinson and Scherlen affirm that there is “overwhelming evidence” that the ONDCP is “consistently making false and dishonest claims” regarding the drug war’s perceived progress, and the authors cite more than 80 instances of the agency’s relying on “inappropriate and dishonest uses of statistics to prove its case.”

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I also have had my feeling that this war is going to bankrupt the country. The occupation of Iraq is bringing this country down the same path the invasion of Afghanistan did to the USSR.

The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to another generation.

On the eve of war, there were discussions of the likely costs. Larry Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council, suggested that they might reach $200 billion. But this estimate was dismissed as “baloney” by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggested that postwar reconstruction could pay for itself through increased oil revenues. Mitch Daniels, the Office of Management and Budget director, and Secretary Rumsfeld estimated the costs in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which they believed would be financed by other countries. (Adjusting for inflation, in 2007 dollars, they were projecting costs of between $57 and $69 billion.) The tone of the entire administration was cavalier, as if the sums involved were minimal.

Even Lindsey, after noting that the war could cost $200 billion, went on to say: “The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.” In retrospect, Lindsey grossly underestimated both the costs of the war itself and the costs to the economy. Assuming that Congress approves the rest of the $200 billion war supplemental requested for fiscal year 2008, as this book goes to press Congress will have appropriated a total of over $845 billion for military operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced security at US bases, and foreign aid programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the fifth year of the war draws to a close, operating costs (spending on the war itself, what you might call “running expenses”) for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4 billion in 2003, and with Afghanistan the total is $16 billion a month. Sixteen billion dollars is equal to the annual budget of the United Nations, or of all but 13 of the US states. Even so, it does not include the $500 billion we already spend per year on the regular expenses of the Defence Department. Nor does it include other hidden expenditures, such as intelligence gathering, or funds mixed in with the budgets of other departments.