Crooked Talk on Iraq Cost
by Joe Conason
The New York Observer.
As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there. He supports the war even at the price of his own career or the life of a child he loves.
Yet although the senator from Arizona is obviously no chicken hawk, he carefully avoids “straight talk” about the real costs of this war in dollars and debt. Like every other politician who agrees with the Bush policy of prolonged war and occupation, he still pretends that we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this endless misadventure without collecting enough tax revenue to pay the actual costs.
Hundreds of billions? Sorry, but that vague estimate is probably far too modest, according to a new book by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. In The Trillion-Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, they warn that the war’s “true budgetary cost,” excluding interest, “is likely to reach $2.7 trillion.” Aside from the price of munitions, contractors, transport, fuel and other fixed costs, their calculations are based on the government’s continuing obligation to provide medical care and disability payments for the thousands of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the coming decades.
(Continued here.)
The New York Observer.
As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there. He supports the war even at the price of his own career or the life of a child he loves.
Yet although the senator from Arizona is obviously no chicken hawk, he carefully avoids “straight talk” about the real costs of this war in dollars and debt. Like every other politician who agrees with the Bush policy of prolonged war and occupation, he still pretends that we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this endless misadventure without collecting enough tax revenue to pay the actual costs.
Hundreds of billions? Sorry, but that vague estimate is probably far too modest, according to a new book by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes. In The Trillion-Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, they warn that the war’s “true budgetary cost,” excluding interest, “is likely to reach $2.7 trillion.” Aside from the price of munitions, contractors, transport, fuel and other fixed costs, their calculations are based on the government’s continuing obligation to provide medical care and disability payments for the thousands of wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans over the coming decades.
(Continued here.)
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1 Comments:
Two reports out this week should also be considered.
CBO report entitled Analysis of the Growth in Funding for Operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere in the War on Terrorism points out how the Bush Administration has changed how funding is done. Funds began to cover not only the current wars but preparations for future activities in the military's "war" on terrorism.
According to the CBO, these changes meant that procurement funding soared in 2007 and 2008, taking 35% of the requested funds. As a result, annual war funding levels have increased by 155% since 2004.
If those costs weren’t enough to drive you batty, Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for a New American Security issued the U.S. Military Index in which “Sixty percent said the U.S. military is weaker than it was five years ago." The officers believe "that either China or Iran, not the United States, is emerging as the strategic victor" in the Iraq war.
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