Studies: Iraq costs US $12B per month

[CptSternn]

We have a thread in politics on this here:

https://www.gothic.net/boards/showth...353#post315353

Original article link:

http://news.**********/s/ap/20080310...pRllb77Kus0NUE

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion — or more — by 2017.

Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

Variations in such estimates stem from the sliding scales of assumptions, scenarios and budget items that are counted. But whatever the estimate, the cost will be huge, the auditors of the Government Accountability Office say.

In a Jan. 30 report to Congress, the GAO observed that the U.S. will be committing "significant" future resources to the wars, "requiring decision makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge."

These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion — with its devastating air bombardments — and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.

No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.

In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Stiglitz, of Columbia University, and Bilmes, of Harvard, report the two wars will have cost the U.S. budget $845 billion in 2007 dollars by next Sept. 30, end of fiscal year 2008, assuming Congress fully funds Bush administration requests. That counts not just military operations, but embassy costs, reconstruction and other war-related expenses.

That total far surpasses the $670 billion in 2007 dollars the Congressional Research Service says was the U.S. price tag for the 12-year Vietnam War.

Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.

The reasons are numerous: the "surge" of additional U.S. units into Iraq; rising fuel costs; fattened bonuses to attract re-enlistments; and particularly the need to "reset," that is, repair or replace worn-out, destroyed or damaged military equipment. Almost $17 billion is appropriated this year for advanced armored vehicles to protect troops against roadside bombs.

Looking ahead, both the CBO and Stiglitz-Bilmes construct two scenarios, one in which U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan drop sharply and early — to 30,000 by late 2009 for the CBO, and to 55,000 by 2012 for Stiglitz-Bilmes — and a second in which the drawdown is more gradual.

Significantly, the two studies view different time frames, the CBO calculating possible costs met in the next 10 years, while Stiglitz and Bilmes also include costs incurred during that period but paid for later, such as equipment replaced in post-2017 budgets.

This factor figures most in the category of veterans' medical care and disability payments, where the CBO foresees $9 billion to $13 billion in costs by 2017. Stiglitz and Bilmes, meanwhile, project $422 billion to $717 billion in costs over the lifetime of soldiers who by 2017 are wounded or otherwise mentally or physically disabled by the wars.

"The CBO is only looking 10 years out on everything," Bilmes noted in an interview.

For its part, a CBO critique suggested that Bilmes and Stiglitz might be overstating the expense of treating veterans' brain injuries, a costly category.

The two economists say their calculations are conservative, because they don't encompass many "hidden" items in the U.S. budget. Their basic projections also exclude the potentially huge debt-service cost — on which CBO approximately agrees — and the cost to the U.S. economy of global oil prices that have quadrupled since 2003, an increase analysts blame partly on the Iraq upheaval.

Estimating all economic and social costs might push the U.S. war bill up toward $5 trillion by 2017, they say.

Their book already figures in the stay-or-leave debate over Iraq.

When Stiglitz testified on Feb. 28 before the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the ranking Republican, New Jersey's Rep. Jim Saxton, complained that such projections are too imprecise to help determine relative costs and benefits of the Iraq war.

Saxton said a rapid U.S. pullout could lead to full-scale civil war and Iranian domination of Iraq, "enormous costs" that he said should be weighed in any calculation.


Heh - I guess this again proves the idea of 'we will be greeted with flowers' and 'the oil will pay for the war' arguments out the window completely now, eh?

If you look at the GDP of the various economies around the world...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...y_GDP_(nominal)

You will see America is spending more a month on war than many countries GDP. (The value of all final goods and services from a nation in a given year)

America could wipe out poverty, homelessness, offer free health care to every America, pay for the college education of every child in America, or solve the social security time bomb issue.

But no. That money is being used to kill people half a world a way...in the name of 'freedom'.

Has anyone benefited from this war in America? I mean sure, some war profiteers in the defense industry and other in the oil industry have made billions - but what about the average American who is the one footing the bill for this war? Wait, let me correct that statement - the war is being paid for with loans, so it's not just the Americans alive today - for the next couple of generations Americans will being paying off the bill for this war.

Can anyone argue that they are better off financially now than they were before? Have their health care needs been met? Their childrens education paid for?

The American government has so far done a great job derfering these costs from the average American so they have no idea how bad this will make things.

I'm waiting for bush to leave office and the proverbial 'other shoe' will then hit the floor...

[Drake Dun]

I don't think things are going to change much if we get Clinton or McCain. Cross your fingers for Obama.

[Solumina]

Obama says pretty things but I would worry about putting my future in the hands of someone who has abstained from more votes than he has cast

[Wormboy]

Originally Posted by Solumina

Obama says pretty things

Yes and they usually don't mean fuck all. At least Hilary is expressing solid plans.

This argument should be in politics, but I tend to avoid that section. It is most assuredly Sternn's kingdom.

[Drake Dun]

I don't know the story behind that, but let's just assume the worst case scenario. Doesn't that still strike you as incredibly trivial compared to the war issue? Clinton and McCain both have bloody hands.

It's not like I'm actually that wild about Obama, but at least he's not a killer.

[Wormboy]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

I don't know the story behind that, but let's just assume the worst case scenario. Doesn't that still strike you as incredibly trivial compared to the war issue? Clinton and McCain both have bloody hands.

It's not like I'm actually that wild about Obama, but at least he's not a killer.

I care more about what they're going to do than what they did.

[Drake Dun]

I notice you do not extend the same logic to the immeasurably less egregious offense of which you accuse Obama.

[Solumina]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

It's not like I'm actually that wild about Obama, but at least he's not a killer.

One of the worst things that could possibly happy is to have a president who is too terrified to make hard decisions in a time of war (the only thing that would really be even less desirable would be another guy like Bush)

[Drake Dun]

What does that have to do with the topic?

[Solumina]

The topic kind of evolved to who would be best able to handle the situation, these things happen

[Drake Dun]

Why, is there some reason to believe that one of the candidates would be "too terrified" to go to war?

[Duane]

Just aslong as the war ends... and we don't end up with another bush... and I gets me a Dr. Pepper, I'm happy.

[viscus]

...and more and more tax money/debt goes spiraling down the defense toilet while the world gets more polarized against us.

You know what we need in America? Conscription. That's right, THE DRAFT. I'll tell you why:

1) Corrupt politicians would have a much harder time selling bullshit like preemptive invasion of foreign countries on false pretenses to the public. When you've got a professional/volunteer military doing the dirty work, the average citizen is less likely to care. If it's a conscript military on the other hand, people will say "Wait a minute, this is my (son's/daughter's/grandchild's/cousin's) ass on the line here. You want to go to war WHY?"

2) The American military culture would change from being dominated by right-wing nationalism to a more balanced subsection of the population at large.

I probably should've started my own thread about this in the politics forum, but whatever. There you have it.

[Solumina]

Originally Posted by Drake Dun

Why, is there some reason to believe that one of the candidates would be "too terrified" to go to war?

My post was in regards to the fact that Obama has a history of avoiding votes that may alienate potential voters. If he is unable to make hard decisions while a member of a large group then I would question his ability to make tough calls when he is the one everyone is looking at

[CSSLZT13]

I personally don't like politics, as I'm usually lost in the ocean of 'who said what' and 'what they actually did,' but I will say this. War sells. Especially this one. If there's anything I've learned from my little experience as a human being, it's that war will bring money to people. Not just the people manufacturing the artillery used, but money to civilizations from these alleged 'philanthropists' that are using this blood money to fuel certain parts of the world. Judging from these figures, the people that are manufacturing weaponry are getting filthy rich, and if this war is ceased in whatever way, then there will be a lot of money lost, and not to mention certain services. What those services are, I don't know, but I'm damn sure there are going to be a lot of previously rich people and faceless gun runners unhappy that their primary market has suddenly ceased.

Then again, this is all pretty much known to most of the world, so who am I to say so?

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by Solumina

My post was in regards to the fact that Obama has a history of avoiding votes that may alienate potential voters. If he is unable to make hard decisions while a member of a large group then I would question his ability to make tough calls when he is the one everyone is looking at

Sigh. Fine, I'll go do some homework and then, barring some kind of very surprising discovery, come back and rip this argument to shreds properly. I'll get back on it within a few days at the outside.

[Drake Dun]

Nevermind on this one. Sometimes it's not worth the time.