$2 billion:
By on Sep 28th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
$2 billion:
Cost of war in Iraq to U.S. taxpayers each week, according to a new congressional analysis. The cost is “twice as much as in the first year of the conflict three years ago and 20 percent more than last year.” The report predicts war costs to reach 808 billion by 2016.
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isn’t that $2 billion per week?
September 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pmYou need to clean this up. It’s $2 billion *in 2007*, your blurb makes it sound like $2 billion *total*.
September 28th, 2006 at 1:59 pm#2 — oh yeah, read too quickly, it’s 2 billion per week…
September 28th, 2006 at 2:05 pm2 billion a week, right? That’s a kind of important qualifier.
Just spitballing here, but didn’t Wolfowitz reckon the whole thing would cost 2 billion in total, ‘cos he thought the oil fairy would pay for everything?
September 28th, 2006 at 2:05 pmI thought this war was going to pay for itself?
…has anybody seen that basta*d Wolfowitz?…
…just wait’ll I get my hands on that…
…sheeeiitttt!
September 28th, 2006 at 2:05 pmThis war was supposed to last 6 months at the most. Where are the flowers and welcoming committee? I’m investing in Halliburton.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:07 pm… this on top of increasing violence… Mission Accomplished!… Hell ya!!!
When is mis-leadership and outright lying an impeachable offense?
September 28th, 2006 at 2:09 pmWolfowitz is running the World Bank, last I heard….. (choke)
September 28th, 2006 at 2:10 pmCongress has so far spent nearly $320 billion on the war. But all of these dollars are dollars that could have been directed toward meeting other needs and investing in our future.
In fact, that amount of money could have provided health care coverage for all uninsured children for as long as the Iraq War has lasted; provided four-year scholarships (tuition and fees) to a public university for all of this year’s graduating seniors; built half a million affordable housing units; fully-funded the amount the Coast Guard estimated is needed for port security; tripled the energy conservation budget in the U.S. Department of Energy; and still enough would be left over to reduce this year’s budget deficit by one-third.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:16 pmI suspect the war will be over no later that January 21, 2009 if not two years sooner.
#6
I am with you. A closer look at the stock market shows that the rise in the last two years was all due to Halliburton and Big Oil. It is a surprise that the Neocons let their companies trade public, afterall they don’t want any of us Libruls getting in their rice bowl.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:17 pmBummer. What can we do about it? Vote for Democrats? They won’t even take a stand against torture and indefinite detention without a trial, for chrissakes.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:17 pm11 / some cry
The Torture Bill votes
Republican
Ayes 219 Naes 7
Democratic
Ayes 34 Naes 160
Democrats 160 Naes compared to 7 naes from the republicans does this not show who is the wisest group
And who are “unlawful enemy combatants” again (another important article worth reading)?
[A]nyone who, as the bill states, “has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States” or its military allies.
The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.
Your a mug if nobody can see what comes next ” A Police State”
September 28th, 2006 at 2:26 pmAll we are paying for in effect is a siege of Bagdhad, and the U.S.military and the ineffectual Iraqi government it props up are the besieged.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:26 pmThe so-called green zone, and the mega air bases out in the deserts are the only areas under the military’s control.
Civil war among Iraqis continues unabated, and the thought of oil revenues is a joke.
The Rumsfeld War Party has repeated the same error in Afghanistan as when the Soviets were driven out, Kabul is basically a city state only, with the rest of the country run by war lords and opium trafficers.
During the 2004 election, Kerry and Edwards were roasted for suggesting that the war would cost American taxpayers over $300 B.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:28 pmThe worst is yet to come
medicare costs for 450 brain dead troops
medicare costs for life of another estimated 20,000
1 in 10 troops of the 140,000 have mental problems = 14,000
Next short fall in Student degrees for future work forces
Long term costs for 9 million uninsured children instead of being cured they are now being treated at hugh cost
short falls in housing – more homeless than ever before
no money in the kitty for future economic growth ie, U.S. Department of Energy solving global warming
Massive budget deficits every man women and child is $28,000 in debt to the rest of the world
Many Europeans and the likes are boycotting American goods ( Big Time)
This really is the end of the American Empire ( Gone )
I think Bush would have messed up the American economy even without bin Laden
September 28th, 2006 at 2:47 pmMake the Bush family pay for their occupation of Iraq and their putrid Oil Cartel cronies too! Force them to pay for it untill they go bankrupt!
September 28th, 2006 at 2:50 pmTo all you die hard republican supporters
Congress Bans Funding for Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
WASHINGTON – September 26 – The U.S. Congress this week finalized legislation that bars funding to construct permanent military bases in Iraq, and states definitively that it is the policy of the United States government not to exercise control over Iraq’s petroleum resources.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:51 pmFull Text for examination
Congress Bans Funding for Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq
WASHINGTON – September 26 – The U.S. Congress this week finalized legislation that bars funding to construct permanent military bases in Iraq, and states definitively that it is the policy of the United States government not to exercise control over Iraq’s petroleum resources.
“The perception that the U.S. military plans to stay in Iraq indefinitely has fueled the insurgency and undermined the stability of the Iraqi government,†said Ruth Flower, legislative director for the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). “This legislation is an important first step in changing the failed U.S. policy in Iraq.â€
The 63-year-old Quaker lobby, FCNL, has been working with members of Congress on this policy since January 2005. Reps. Barbara Lee (CA) and Tom Allen (ME) advanced stand-alone bills to bar permanent bases in 2005, and in 2006 the House and the Senate approved similar amendments banning permanent bases as part of an emergency supplemental spending bill and then as part of the military authorization legislation. In both cases, the administration persuaded leaders in the House and Senate to strip out the “no permanent bases†language during conference committee negotiations.
But when similar language was attached to the FY07 military appropriations bill (H.R. 5631) by Rep. John Murtha (PA) in the House and Sen. Joe Biden (DE) in the Senate, negotiators from the House and Senate held firm. The final conference report on the military appropriations bill released September 25 prohibits the Pentagon from spending money to establish military installations or bases in Iraq. The House and Senate are expected to vote on the final version of this legislation later this week.
While we at FCNL believe this declaration of policy is an important step toward changing U.S. policy in Iraq, we are concerned that the military appropriations bill also includes an additional $70 billion in funding for the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The U.S. government’s own National Intelligence Estimate confirms what we have been hearing from people in Iraq for more than a year – that the U.S. presence in Iraq has fueled the development of a new generation of violent radical groups and has made the overall problem of terrorism worse,†said Flower. War is not the answer.
September 28th, 2006 at 2:56 pmdid YOU call yet? …is there still time? …worth a try…
We still have a chance to stop one of the most egregious features of the Detainee/Torture bill. Please contact your Senators and tell them to support Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter’s ammendment to restore habeas corpus rights, allowing suspects at the very least an opportunity to challenge their detainment in court. Senators Collins and Snowe, both moderate Republicans, need a bit of a push on this:
September 28th, 2006 at 2:57 pmcapital switchboard: 866.340.9281 .or. 866.808.0065
…
if they won’t vote against the torture bill, this is the best to hope for…
…
Terror 2016
This is a story about what America will look if the Senate approves the legislation
September 28th, 2006 at 3:03 pmIt was Andrew Natrios on Nightline. Look up Boondoggle on Google Video or click on my name.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:10 pmThe definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.
Your a mug if nobody can see what comes next †A Police Stateâ€
Comment by Tobey+Tall — September 28, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
Jose Padilla is an American citizen and was designated an unlawful combatant.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:25 pmWHAT AMERICA DID TO IRAN
Opening With an Apology
by Robert Bruce Ware
I’ll probably be sorry for suggesting it.
But maybe it really wasn’t such a good idea for the CIA to help the British overthrow Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected, secular prime minister of Iran, back in 1953. Maybe we should have been more careful about installing the shah and propping him up with American arms. We only hurt ourselves in 1972, when we helped the shah buy more of our weapons by nudging him toward an artificial inflation of oil prices. It seems that was the beginning of OPEC. If we’d left Mossadegh alone, we might have avoided those lines in 1973 and 1979, and gas might be cheaper today.
Probably we should have thought twice about training SAVAK. The secret police tormented the Iranian people for nearly 25 years with such brutal efficiency that nearly every Iranian who was born before 1980 had a friend or family member who was imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by SAVAK.
So before we talk about brutalizing those people any further, maybe we should apologize for what we’ve already done.
Sure, we don’t want them to build a bomb, but we don’t really want to go to war with them either. According to Time magazine, an aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities would require at least 1,500 sorties, some against sites in civilian areas. And that’s just counting the 30 facilities we’ve identified. As Donald Rumsfeld once said, there are things “we don’t know we don’t know.” And we won’t know those things until our boots are on their ground, which is where an aerial bombardment is likely to leave us.
Iranian retaliation might lead to more attacks on American troops next door in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran might mine the Strait of Hormuz, driving oil as high as $100 per barrel. That would be before their supporters blew up pipelines in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. At that point we’d have little alternative to full-scale occupation and regime change in Iran, while we’re still trying to manage Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it’s not just the sorry state of any future war, but also the tragedies of wars past. When the Iranians finally got rid of the shah and SAVAK in 1978, they were no longer pro-Western. So they established an Islamic Republic, commandeered our embassy, and shouted “Death to America.”
We were looking for a way to contain our newly minted enemies, so in 1983, Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad to cozy up with Saddam Hussein. We shipped Saddam weapons that he used to slaughter a million Iranians. In order to wage that eight-year war, Saddam borrowed $20 billion from Kuwait. When Kuwait asked for repayment in 1990, the cash-strapped Saddam decided that it would be no more difficult to send his troops to Kuwait than to Iran, and that the U.S. would not object to one any more than the other.
So there was that four-day storm in the desert. Apart from hundreds of burning oil wells and thousands of slaughtered Shi’ites, it didn’t end too badly for us because the elder Bush was wise enough to stay out of Baghdad. But he was able to do so only by setting up American military bases in Saudi Arabia. That upset a black sheep from the bin Laden family. Down went the WTC, and then came the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In retrospect, it’s hard to say what was so bad about Mossadegh. Not only was he democratically elected, but he was not anti-American. We weren’t at war in the Middle East. Oil was cheap. We were spending more of our treasure on our own roads and schools.
Of course, we’re not responsible for every twist in this vicious cycle, and we’ve suffered along with everyone else. But we gave it a spin back in 1953, and we’ve torqued it a few times since then. It’s not going to stop until we take a look at what we did in Iran and start doing things differently. An apology might not be a bad start.
What we did to the Iranian people was wrong.
September 28th, 2006 at 3:28 pmThanks Tobey Tall #23
But to the racist, arrogant, ignorant inbred Bushites…
… it won’t matter…
September 28th, 2006 at 3:33 pm24/ I just found that I had been seeking a WHY for ages.. glad i found it and glad you liked it – peace
September 28th, 2006 at 3:39 pmLet’s see: 30m Iraqis into 2 billion dollars a week…$67 a week. According to Wikipedia GDP per head is $3500/year – that’s also $67 a week.
Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?
September 28th, 2006 at 3:40 pm24/ heres another ha ha ha ha
US and NATO forces are not fighting “terrorists,” as their governments claim. They are fighting the Afghan people.
In recent weeks, near panicky calls by British PM Tony Blair for more NATO troops to be sent to Afghanistan show that western occupation forces are on the defensive, fighting to hold their bases, and facing the specter of eventual defeat. Just, in fact, like every other invader that has ever occupied Afghanistan.
I saw mujahidin too poor to afford shoes strap 110 lbs of mortar shells on their backs, and climb 6–8 hours over mountains through snow to bombard a Communist base, then trudge home. These are the people we are fighting. Anyone who knows Afghans know they will not be defeated, even if they must resist for an entire generation.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:16 pm#6 You might want to hold off on that Haliburton investment. I heard today that a $75M showcase of the U.S. rebuilding efforts, an Iraq police facility, is a steaming pile of junk. Leaking pipes, urine and feces dripping from the cieling from leaking sewer pipes above. Some of the facility will need demolished.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:21 pmthis may be the only government program democrats are willing to cut.
September 28th, 2006 at 4:47 pmNew al-Qaeda tape urges kidnappings
Read the above article Abu Ayyub al-Masri the New Leader of Al Queda in Iraq is so smart compared to Al.Zagarwi , this guy seems to be trying completely new ideas
1. kidnapping of people for swaps with Muslims in Guatanamo
2. looking for biological weapons to attack American superbases
3. calling a ceasefire on Iraqi for a month
I like it this guys got panache a formidable opponent for the Occupiers
September 28th, 2006 at 5:41 pm3 billion would build levees in New Orleans that would withstand a category five hurricane, but Bush is the president dedicated to protecting Americans.
September 28th, 2006 at 6:14 pmPaul, we would be willing to cut the $400 billion a year corporate welfare givaway!!
September 28th, 2006 at 10:11 pm