"Mission Accomplished" and New York Streets' Shell Games

If you grew up in New York City, or have wandered its streets as a visitor, you have seen people in front of small tables on which there are shells, one of which covers an object (small, like a pea). The object is to get the mark to wager that he can guess which shell covers the pea as the con man moves the shells around, delivers rapid fire patter, and uses distraction and a partner to separate the mark from his money.  The keys to this fraud are rapid movement, distraction, and the appearance of simplicity.  The shell game is a con which separates people from their money because they don't understand what is going on in front of them.

I  wonder whether the well-publicized announcement that our Iraq mission had been accomplished was part of a shell game in which the American people were distracted from the real purpose of their government's executive, advisers and political party while the significant plan was to separate our citizens from $3 billion (and many lives) that the Iraq "mission" has cost, making social and health programs unaffordable and unavailable.  We are now told that we cannot afford schools for kids, health care for seniors, medical care for our poor, or even a clean safe environment because our country has been plunged into near bankruptcy by our social programs.  Was the real plan to be accomplished on the aircraft carrier during the mission accomplished show a carefully staged charade to deplete our financial resources so that the wealthiest country in the world could not afford social justice programs?  Are our pockets now empty - and our ability to provide health care for the poor, sick and elderly wasted - because of  a sophisticated con carried out by a politician who appears to have vanished from the national stage and seems to be forgotten (or hidden?) by his political party?