Category: International

In an article by New York Times reporter David Leonhardt, we learn the true cost of the war in Iraq. This analysis puts the real cost of the war at $300 BILLION a day.

In the days before the war almost five years ago, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost about $50 billion. Democratic staff members in Congress largely agreed. Lawrence Lindsey, a White House economic adviser, was a bit more realistic, predicting that the cost could go as high as $200 billion, but President Bush fired him in part for saying so.

These estimates probably would have turned out to be too optimistic even if the war had gone well. Throughout history, people have typically underestimated the cost of war, as William Nordhaus, a Yale economist, has pointed out.

But the deteriorating situation in Iraq has caused the initial predictions to be off the mark by a scale that is difficult to fathom. The operation itself — the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq — is costing more than $300 million a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.

The analysis from there only gets more troubling:

The war has also guaranteed some big future expenses. Replacing the hardware used in Iraq and otherwise getting the United States military back into its prewar fighting shape could cost $100 billion. And if this war’s veterans receive disability payments and medical care at the same rate as veterans of the first gulf war, their health costs will add up to $250 billion. If the disability rate matches Vietnam’s, the number climbs higher. Either way, Ms. Bilmes says, “It’s like a miniature Medicare.”

In economic terms, you can think of these medical costs as the difference between how productive the soldiers would have been as, say, computer programmers or firefighters and how productive they will be as wounded veterans. In human terms, you can think of soldiers like Jason Poole, a young corporal profiled in The New York Times last year. Before the war, he had planned to be a teacher. After being hit by a roadside bomb in 2004, he spent hundreds of hours learning to walk and talk again, and he now splits his time between a community college and a hospital in Northern California.

Read the entire article here.

I can’t rejoice at the demise of Saddam Hussein.

This journey to Iraq has been hell for all of us. It has not ended, and it is not successful. Perhaps this is President George Bush’s wet dream come true. Maybe he’s ecstatic. Maybe he had an extra wonderful Happy New Year because Saddam hung from the gallows. Maybe he was watching via closed-circuit television to watch Hussein’s neck snap. Maybe he screwed Laura when it was all over.? Maybe he drank champagne in the immediate aftermath.
Yes, I think he’s back on the bottle.

Just listen to him, for God’s sake.

But I can’t rejoice. No, Saddam was not a good man. He was not a great human being.

What happened, however, does not add up. It’s not over yet. I don’t even know if most Americans can find Iraq on a map. But we need to learn now. We’re forever linked to the history of Iraq.

Because of George Bush’s wet dream.