$1-2 trillion.
By on Jan 6th, 2006 at 7:17 am
$1-2 trillion.
The true cost of the Iraq war, according to Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes.
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Gosh. And I though $300 billion was $300 billion too much.
January 6th, 2006 at 7:37 amWell that will buy a few bombs to kill innocent people and take over their natural resources.
The big Oil boys have already been in meeting to privitaze Iraqi Oil it was cut in Thirds.
America,British and Aussies have control now.
That is why there are long lines and new bombing of the pipe lines.
This has been the biggest heist in history and noone did anything about it.
I’ve no idea as to whom I’m voting for in 2008 prolly Russ Feingold because he is the only one with balls to call a spade a spade.
January 6th, 2006 at 7:47 amAnd not one dime will go to the Iraqis.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:01 amHow do you know the Iraq oil reserves have been split 3 ways …cannot find any coverage on this
January 6th, 2006 at 8:02 amShame on America and Britain …our economies must be so bad we have to steal
January 6th, 2006 at 8:03 amSounds like its time for a tax break to me.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Repubica-speak that would “jump-start” the effort to pay off the cost.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:37 amGive it back its blood money
January 6th, 2006 at 8:41 amhahvard ‘no-bel’. too funny
January 6th, 2006 at 8:55 amPutting a $ cost on the war is an interesting academic exercise but of little value to a populace who can’t connect it to anything. As a % of GDP,this works out to 8-16% of one year’s economic activity. The continued turn against the war won’t come from how big the bill is.
January 6th, 2006 at 8:55 amThe GAO has estimated the cost of each active duty soldier at $103k/yr. so the personnel cost alone at 150,000 troops is $15.6 billion/year. Numbers,numbers,numbers
Chimp’s Iraq legacy:
1-2 trillion spent; tens of thousands dead; an ungovernable country.
And still he has the audacity to criticize people who call this a failure.
**Insult chosen expression of outrage**
January 6th, 2006 at 9:06 amDoes anyone know how much “The War on Christmas†cost?
January 6th, 2006 at 9:25 amwhat ever impeachment costs, I’LL PAY IT!
January 6th, 2006 at 10:02 amSpending so much money to create East Iran with two Talibans in tow must rank right up there with:
Attacking Russia in the middle of winter (Napoleon)
The guys who let the Trojan horse in (Greece)
To be honest, I rack my brains, but I can’t find anything worse. Can you?
January 6th, 2006 at 10:14 amOh yes, .. the claim that World War one will be “over by Christmas” … that’s another ill-judged adventure this Iraqi madness
January 6th, 2006 at 10:17 amMay the curse of Larry Lindsey be upon you Joe Stiglitz! Remember Larry lindsey, former under Sec. for Treasury, after being asked on the Fox Weekend report how much the war would cost way back when DEC. 2002, said Between 150 to 200 billion. He was fired, excuse me he resigned, that week. The truth hurts this crowd at the White House, especially budgets that they ignore. But to be honest they just don’t care.
January 6th, 2006 at 10:24 amTo think that all that money could have been invested in cleaner alternative energy sources, with loads of jobs creation and the creation of a new sunrise (as opposed to sunset) industry sector.
What a bunch of bozos
January 6th, 2006 at 10:50 amSpending the monies on cleaner alternative energys and Helping the sick and needy in America, education, housing
instead the rest of the world boycotts your goods and dont want to buy property or even visit America
All because your foreign Policy .. what a shame
January 6th, 2006 at 11:02 amRepublican Talking Point #1
I don’t see what the big deal is…it was estimated at 100-200B but it is really costing 1000-2000B (or 1-2 trillion)
it is really just an extra zero which equals nothing (maybe geo metro will back me up on my math & logic!)
January 6th, 2006 at 11:03 amWell, there goes my retirement! Oops, I forgot, the govenment wasn’t giving out social security monies when I retire, just IOUs. Scratch that, now it’s going to be us retirees, flipping burgers, and sending all our money to support the life style Washington has become accustom to. It’s going to be a toss up of whether, I’ll be supporting my children and grandchildren, or they will be supporting me, since none of us are going to have much of anything after Washington gets done.
January 6th, 2006 at 11:26 amI don’t think that your Social Security payments are at risk,besides,you’ll need them to make the premium payments for Medicare.
January 6th, 2006 at 12:30 pmI guess our Children and Grandchildren will be paying for this war for years to come. I also think the Bushies, Cheney, and his administration should pay for this war out of their own pockets.
January 6th, 2006 at 1:32 pmClinton was a great guy all he ever did wrong was to ask Monica to Sack the cook …and she misheard ….really compared to Bush he was Fantastic
January 6th, 2006 at 1:36 pmThat’d be about $633 trillion a head for Saddam, Uday, and Qusay.
A bargain at today’s inflated prices, if you’re an inbred Bushite…
January 6th, 2006 at 2:02 pmConsider parallel events in the United States. Last October, an American surgeon, loved by his patients, was punished with 22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhea, Dr. Rafil Dhafir broke a siege that, according to UNICEF, had caused the deaths of half a million under the age of five. The then attorney general of the United States, John Ashcroft, called Dr. Dhafir, a Muslim, a “terrorist,” a description mocked by even the judge in his politically motivated travesty of a trial.
January 6th, 2006 at 2:40 pm13- Some old guy, Pyrrhus, comes to mind. It ended badly for him too.
January 6th, 2006 at 2:40 pmBush & Cheney just laugh and say “the Dems would prefer to live in a world where Sadaam Hussein was still in power.”
James R. Schlesinger say’s we should focus on the positive things like the fact that a crippled organization like Al Queda (3/4s killled or captured) has not vanquished the world’s only superpower. Whoopieee!
January 6th, 2006 at 2:43 pm26- How about a world where people from our government didn’t put into power and support people like Hussein? Or a world where people like Cheney didn’t skirt the law to do business with people like Hussein? Yeah, I know, unrealistic expectation.
January 6th, 2006 at 2:46 pmThe GAO has estimated the cost of each active duty soldier at $103k/yr. so the personnel cost alone at 150,000 troops is $15.6 billion/year. Numbers,numbers,numbers
Comment by TJM #9
It’s still a WASTE, in lives and resources….
January 6th, 2006 at 3:00 pmTo be honest, I rack my brains, but I can’t find anything worse. Can you?
Comment by bad genepool — January 6, 2006 @ 10:14 am
Augustus, 9BC, Germany:
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:01 pmCostly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
By Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, author of “Transformation of War”, and only non-American author on the U.S. Army’s required reading list for officers.
Clinton was a great guy all he ever did wrong was to ask Monica to Sack the cook …and she misheard ….
Comment by The Flying Scotsman #22
LMAOROF!!!!!!!
We all REALLY needed that!
Great post!
January 6th, 2006 at 3:04 pmFrom the WP today…”Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized Rep. John P. Murtha yesterday for sending “the wrong message” to American youth when the congressman indicated in an interview this week that he would not join today’s military.”
January 6th, 2006 at 3:05 pmGen. Peter Pace is not an elected official. He should keep his own mouth shut and his face out of the political arena. McArthur got his nose cut off by sticking it into the political forum, and I think this guy is bucking for the same treatment.
J. Edgar Hoover’s directive to spy on the Rev. Martin Luther King because he was a subversive. If Bush’s latest acts are left unchallenged, the government will become bolder at spying on whomever it wants and secretly jailing those it deems a threat to national security — all with no troublesome warrants or messy public trials.
In this environment, acts other than terrorism will certainly be put on the subversive activities list, all in the name of protecting our freedom.
Why should law-abiding citizens fear these trends? Because the government cannot be trusted. I don’t trust President Bush to honor my rights, nor did I trust President Clinton, who was caught with secret FBI files on his political enemies.
It’s not that I’m unpatriotic. The founders of our country did not trust any government — either that of George III or an uncontrolled democracy. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights to protect American citizens from their own government — by demanding, for example, that “Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech.’’
January 6th, 2006 at 3:12 pmThat’s so true Flying Scotsman. And that’s why I find reports about our military generals taking a political stance. It’s a very short, far too short, of a step from there to a totalitarian state. How do dictators take over countries? By making political deals with the military. Gen. Pace’s boss is Bush, and Bush can speak for himself. He doesn’t need the backing of the military, and they don’t need to take a political position. IT’s dangerous.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:34 pm” And that’s why I find reports about our military generals taking a political stance SO DISTURBING”.. is the way that should have read. Sorry.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:36 pmWhen military generals start taking sides in political squabbles can a dictatorship (or military coup) be far behind?
Not that the right wing traitors in the military would overthrow their “Fuhrer”, I’m talking about turning the military against “the people” they’re supposed to be protecting and serving…
Pace (and any other Bushite generals who speak out politically) should probably be relieved of his command.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:42 pmIt’s not that I’m unpatriotic. The founders of our country did not trust any government — either that of George III or an uncontrolled democracy. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights to protect American citizens from their own government — by demanding, for example, that “Congress shall make no law abridging the right of free speech.’’
This applies to “human rights also” and the abolition of Death Penalties in Europe
To protect us from evil goverments
January 6th, 2006 at 3:42 pmCostly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
By Martin van Creveld
November 25, 2005
The number of American casualties in Iraq is now well more than 2,000, and there is no end in sight. Some two-thirds of Americans, according to the polls, believe the war to have been a mistake. And congressional elections are just around the corner.
What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon — and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.
Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the “Vietnamization” of the country. The rest of America’s forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a “peace settlement” with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam — which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.
Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight.
Whereas North Vietnam at least had a government with which it was possible to arrange a cease-fire, in Iraq the opponent consists of shadowy groups of terrorists with no central organization or command authority. And whereas in the early 1970s equipment was still relatively plentiful, today’s armed forces are the products of a technology-driven revolution in military affairs. Whether that revolution has contributed to anything besides America’s national debt is open to debate. What is beyond question, though, is that the new weapons are so few and so expensive that even the world’s largest and richest power can afford only to field a relative handful of them.
Therefore, simply abandoning equipment or handing it over to the Iraqis, as was done in Vietnam, is simply not an option. And even if it were, the new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was. For all intents and purposes, Washington might just as well hand over its weapons directly to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Clearly, then, the thing to do is to forget about face-saving and conduct a classic withdrawal.
Handing over their bases or demolishing them if necessary, American forces will have to fall back on Baghdad. From Baghdad they will have to make their way to the southern port city of Basra, and from there back to Kuwait, where the whole misguided adventure began. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak pulled Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, the military was able to carry out the operation in a single night without incurring any casualties. That, however, is not how things will happen in Iraq.
Not only are American forces perhaps 30 times larger, but so is the country they have to traverse. A withdrawal probably will require several months and incur a sizable number of casualties. As the pullout proceeds, Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge — if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not.
Having been thoroughly devastated by two wars with the United States and a decade of economic sanctions, decades will pass before Iraq can endanger its neighbors again. Yet a complete American withdrawal is not an option; the region, with its vast oil reserves, is simply too important for that. A continued military presence, made up of air, sea and a moderate number of ground forces, will be needed.
First and foremost, such a presence will be needed to counter Iran, which for two decades now has seen the United States as “the Great Satan.” Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war — a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has. In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs’ clutches.
A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets’ nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah’s name.
The Gulf States apart, the most vulnerable country is Jordan, as evidenced by the recent attacks in Amman. However, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Israel are also likely to feel the impact. Some of these countries, Jordan in particular, are going to require American assistance.
Maintaining an American security presence in the region, not to mention withdrawing forces from Iraq, will involve many complicated problems, military as well as political. Such an endeavor, one would hope, will be handled by a team different from — and more competent than — the one presently in charge of the White House and Pentagon.
For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men. If convicted, they’ll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of “Transformation of War” (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army’s required reading list for officers.
January 6th, 2006 at 3:49 pmThat’s sickening. All of that money could have been used to help solve some of our OWN country’s numerous problems… (Any other proposals like education or health care of course probably wouldn’t have passed because people don’t like paying taxes unless it’s to “defend our ’safety’”
January 6th, 2006 at 3:50 pm#25 and #29 – Thanks, that means it’s not just me but military historians saying this.
With friends like this who needs enemies?
January 6th, 2006 at 9:38 pmHow did US make with those 2 Trillion spent? I always heard that war is good for economy. Look at San Diego — just kept on going —
War is horrible .. but sure the money spent over there helped over here somehow.
January 10th, 2006 at 4:34 pm