Take this exchange between CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Rep. John Boehner, the Republican House Minority Leader:

BLITZER: Mr. Leader, here’s the question. How much longer will U.S. taxpayers have to shell out $2 billion a week or $3 billion a week as some now are suggesting the cost is going to endure? The loss in blood, the Americans who are killed every month, how much longer do you think this commitment, this military commitment is going to require?

BOEHNER: I think General Petraeus outlined it pretty clearly. We’re making success. We need to firm up those successes. We need to continue our effort here because, Wolf, long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East, it’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids.

What Mr. Boehner calls “the investment that we’re making today” and considers “a small price for the near future” is an outrageously high cost in lives and dollars for Americans to pay for Mr. Bush’s failed war of choice in Iraq.

Political bloggers broke the story first, with the mainstream media right behind. As word of this callous assessment by Mr. Boehner spreads, more and more citizens are becoming enraged at such an egregious equation when the lives of Americans are on the line in Iraq. And well they should be, too.

Senator Kerry responded to Mr. Boehner’s dubious parsing of prices being paid in no uncertain terms, in an exclusive Huffington Post diarythat he posted there this morning:

What a stunningly cavalier statement about the lives of the young men and women who serve our country.

Whether you support or oppose the Bush escalation, no American should ever for even a moment think the cost of war is small.

A single life is a large price to pay for any endeavor. Sometimes, in our national interest, we choose to pay that awful price, but we must always make sure that the policy is worthy of it.

Visit our wounded warriors at Walter Reed hospital and ask whether the price they paid was small. Talk to the mothers, fathers, husbands and wives of those who have been killed and ask them to measure the price of war. Young lives stopped short, children who won’t have a mother or father there as they grow up, when they graduate, when they get married — that loss is many things, but it is not small.

Where is Representative Boehner’s apology? And where is an Iraq policy equal to our soldiers’ tremendous sacrifice?

The first comment posted to Senator Kerry’s Huffington Post thread by a blogger known as LeftRight reminds us of what really matters, too:

Don’t forget the other costs of this war.
Don’t forget the men and women who come back from war forever changed by it.
Don’t forget the men and women coming back who can’t care for themselves, and need to be cared for as a baby for the rest of their lives.
Don’t forget the men and women who come back home, only to find that they can’t get out of the war.

And finally,
Don’t forget the Iraqi people.
Don’t forget the men and women who were just living their lives.
Don’t forget the men and women who were happy.
Don’t forget the almost 4 million who can’t live in their homes anymore.
Don’t forget the almost 1 million who are dead.
And don’t forget the families of those 1 thousand thousand people who are no longer alive, so that georgie and boehner could “protect” us by making us less safe…

Blood is more precious than gold. And even a single life is a very large price to pay.

Mr. Bush and those who still support his administration’s disastrous adventure in Iraq would do well to remember that.

If not, it’s up to us to remind them — early, often, and always.