War Costs Spiral out of Control
Hey, $1 billion here, $1 billion there, who’s counting? Not the State Department, which admitted this week that it can’t say “specifically what it received” for the $1.2 billion it paid DynCorp, ostensibly to train the Iraqi police - other than that somebody got an Olympic-size swimming pool out of the deal.
On Monday, President Bush demanded that Congress fork over another $46 billion to pay for his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, insisting that it be approved by the end of the year. That brings the total requested this year in “supplementary funds” for his foreign adventures to $196.4 billion. The prez said Congress had best pony up, or the members would be betraying the family of the dead Marine that he was using as prop for this particular White House photo-op.
Of course the Democrats, after some pussyfooting, will sign off, as they have for the rest of the more than $800 billion that will have been allotted to Iraq and Afghanistan by year’s end, lest they be accused of failing the troops that Bush has put in harm’s way. “Our men and women on the front lines should not be caught in the middle of partisan disagreements in Washington, D.C.,” Bush warned darkly, while edging ever closer to the family of the fallen Marine. “I often hear that war critics oppose my decisions, but still support the troops,” he said. “Well, I’ll take them at their word - and this is the chance to show it.”
I half-expected some leading Democrat to respond, “Hey, you want support for the troops, I’ll see your $46 billion and raise you another $46 billion.” But then again, Joe Lieberman is no longer running the party. Instead, the Democrats tried to show that $46 billion is not loose change and that, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, put it, a mere 40 days of the cost of the Iraq war could provided annual health insurance coverage for 10 million American children. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., added that the money might be better spent for law enforcement, homeland security and fixing the nation’s sagging infrastructure, but his argument wasn’t going to get any better traction than Pelosi’s. As Reid pointed out, “this intractable civil war in Iraq … is being paid for by borrowed money.”
Sure, some day the Chinese communists and others holding our debt will have to be paid back with compounded interest, but for now the war has been successfully marketed as a financial freebie. Leave it to the next generation to wake up and discover that this war, which in constant dollars has already cost more than the Korean or Vietnam wars, prevents Congress from implementing any of the needed domestic programs, even those advocated by both parties, as was the children’s health insurance bill vetoed by Bush last week. But even if you think none of that domestic spending is needed, even for fixing Medicare and Social Security, the cost of this war will require a substantial increase in taxes over coming decades.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the future additional costs of these wars over the next 10 years at between at between $481 billion to $1.01 trillion, depending on how fast the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wound down. Those are extremely optimistic projections that assume these wars will wind down and that the United States will be able to finally climb out of the quagmire. Much more likely is the spread of those wars to neighboring battle theaters in Pakistan and Iran. And that’s without conjuring up the prospect of WWIII, as Bush did last week.
Understand further that all of the numbers referenced above refer only to that part of the defense budget directly attributable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Post-9/11 defense spending, excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has increased 40 percent to build high-tech Cold War-era weapons in a charade that assumes that stateless terrorists present a military challenge even greater than the once mighty Soviet Union’s armed forces. The $686 billion overall 2008 defense budget is the highest since World War II.
There was a time when responsible politicians would sharply decry this looting of the public treasury, but not now, when we are in the midst of a never-ending “war on terror.” Not now, when a Marine dies a needless death in Iraq, a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 or in any substantiated way presented a threat to the United States, and his family can be produced as cover for a president determined to morally and financially bankrupt the nation.
Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.
© 2007 TruthDig.com
Nobody really expects the Democrats not to cave in again on this issue do they?? It is time to vote out any politician who supports the Iraq war regardless of party affiliation. There is no other way it can end.
It pays to remember that “war” is simply the current mechanism by which your tax dollars find their way into corporate coffers. In 2006, 41 percent of government expenditure fell under this heading. That’s a pretty big entitlement program.
Please tell me how to vote someone out of office when the only candidates available are tweedledum and tweedledee. If given the option of “yes” or “no,” and a majority of “no’ votes would put someone out of office, well then they may be ousted. Otherwise, it seems we’re stuck.
Isn’t it amazing how the dems can go, faster than a speeding bullet, from capitulacrats to apolocrats back to capitulacrats? Disgusting…
The simple (and only) way to get the proper taxes levied to pay for wars in real time is to elect a Democratic Congress (including 61 Democratic Senators) and a Democratic president AT THE SAME TIME. In 2008.
This is the way you fix the budget, it is the way you get domestic priorities funded, and it is the way you put the brakes on military misadventures, even knowing it will take a mile to stop the train now in motion.
Yeah, I know. The naysayers are coming. The naysayers are coming. And, you know what? They’re just naysayers. I even ran into one of them so nutty on another thread, he declared he “did not listen to sensible people”–preferring to argue for something other than “sensible”. Hard to know what to say to that other than “good grief” and “moving on now.”
This past week it was reported that several foreign countries are switching their reserves off the dollar and shifting to other currencies like the yen. 186 billion in recent months.
Sheer points out that to pay off this borrowing we will have to raise taxes and likely since two trillion is owed to social security, that will see calls for cuts in payouts and calls to privatise a ‘bankrupt’ system because there is no money to pay that back.
The infrastructure? The increasingly costly effects of global warming like drought and forest fires due to a permanent shift to a greater aridity (rather than a drought which implies an end and a return to more normal wetter conditions), and the war’s costs and worse Bush’s eerie complacency about WW3… ?
We have been scammed and skimmed and boy did ‘they’ make a bundle by taking the american eagle and turning it into the golden goose. Then they said starve the beast (the method was apparently by putting the money in their pockets)!
Someone should have noticed that the beast they starve is their own horse…America.
I have a very bad feeling about where all this is headed. Even if the democrats win big in ‘08 I suspect their policies will only seek to spread enough wealth among Americans to buy off our consent for more abusive foreign policy.
I question whether the ever escalating cost of war figures we have recently been hearing take into account all of the
indirect costs such as caring for the the US military’s war “casualties”. During previous wars those costs were more predictable as most casualties died and the total cost of each one was known within weeks of the “event”.
Medical science has now advanced to the point that they are saving the lives of many casualties that would have died in previous wars. There is no way to calculate the total cost of keeping those tens of thousands of casualties alive for many years to come. There is no question, however, that the ongoing experimental treatments they receive will cost US taxpayers a bundle. As the US invades Iran and the other Asian nations that have oil, there will likely be hundreds of thousands of military casualties requiring lifetime medical services at the US taxpayers’ expense.
If you can spend money to kill people you can spend money to help people.
Tony Benn, British Labour Party
Isn’t it interesting there is always enough money for war but when proposals are made for Infrastruture Repair, Housing, Health Care, Public Transit, etc there are grave concerns about the budget and about taxes and about deficits. Isn’t it also interesting that the major “defense industries” are lavishing campaign contributions on the Democrats.
Now we will see people arguing in these pages to tackle these problems with “sensible” politics in 2008 which, of course, means electing Democrats to Congress and the White House.A great solution. The Powers That Be have screwed things up so bad that the solution is to elect their co-cospiritors!
The Dems have been practicing Sensible Politics since the Carter Administration (triangulation, Repub Lite, the DLC etc) and all that happens is that things keep getting worse and the Political center of gravity keeps moving to the right.
I too won’t listen to “Sensible People” if all they counsel is MORE OF THE SAME! Hillary Clinton ! Nancy Pelosi ! Harry Reid ! Are these sensible people ???
FDR’s Democratic Party is dead. The DLC is now the Democratic Party of Big Business and Corporations. The Democratic Party is the place Progressive Reform goes to die. It’s time for that party to go the way of the Federalists, the Know-Nothings and the Whigs: a richly deserved oblivion.
Get the ball rolling with Cindy Sheehan for Congress!!!!!!!
“U.S. CBO estimates $2.4 trillion long-term war costs”
2 hours, 56 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - “The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost taxpayers a total of $2.4 trillion by 2017 when counting the huge interest costs because combat is being financed with borrowed money, according to a study released on Wednesday.
With President George W. Bush indicating a large contingent of U.S. troops likely will be engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years to come, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the total tab for the wars from 2001 through 2017.
CBO estimated that interest costs alone from 2001-2017 could total more than $700 billion.
So far, Congress has given Bush $604 billion for the two wars, with about $412 billion spent in Iraq, according to CBO, which is Congress’ in-house budget analyst. In Iraq alone, the United States is spending about $11 billion a month, with costs escalating.
Bush is seeking another $196 billion for combat in Iraq and Afghanistan through September 30 and Congress is expected to debate that request over the next few months.
CBO estimated that between 2008 and 2017, the wars could cost slightly more than $1 trillion, assuming overall troop strength is cut to 75,000 by 2013.
Currently, there are about 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and another 26,000 in Afghanistan.
Finance charges for the money already spent on the war will total $415 billion from 2001 to 2017, according to CBO. For the next decade, “interest outlays would increase by a total of $290 billion over that 10-year period,” CBO told the House Budget Committee, which is reviewing long-term war costs…..”
WELL BU$H HAS BANKRUPTED EVERY THING ELSE HE’S HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF MEDDLING IN…
Why no comments on the Kurds “provoking” the Turks, whose troops are massing along the border? Turkey crosses border, Kurdish territory is either taken over or the countries with significant Kurdish populations join in or mix it up, like Iraq and Iran. Goodness, what would happen next?
The oligarchy planned it that way and looked how much they’re raking in!
A few opinions on a fine article.
Public debt for private profit is the current scheme creating the greatest diversion of public wealth in history via the “War On Terror.”
The war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply the preferred method for robbing the American public.
And the neocon and PNAC plan is to occupy Iraq and Central Asia for the coming century at taxpayer expense. This scenario will generate profit for the oil and military industries but we will all pay.
Since the “war” started, the dollar has been falling on international markets while domestic inflation and deficit spending increase. In short the elite profiteers are destroying the American economy and standard of living and saddling the majority with debt.
And what happens when American consumers are too broke to participate in the consumer economy and can no longer buy goods from China and Japan who are currently purchasing our debt ?
And we might want to factor in the long term costs of global warming resulting from not developing cleaner energy alternatives. Not only are the fossil fuels a global warming problem but they are the primary reason for our outrageous military spending.
We are presently subsidizing an incompetent military that serves the oil industry. So why not shift the spending to alternative energy industries that could replace the counterproductive defense complex ? Create carbon neutral jobs instead of war jobs !
The problem remains how to shut down these crimes against humanity and the American public when both parties are under the influence of the military complex, Big Oil, and AIPAC lobbies ?
Sounds a bit like how the USSR went down, doesn’t it? Didn’t we ’starve the beast’ by upping the ante in war prep and the arms race? Weren’t we pretty successful at bleeding the USSR? Is this what is now being done to us? Can they bring us down by bankrupting us? One would think with the Russian example so recent, that many people would believe so!
You could have greened up and led, but you ransacked it, and so the world bled.
You could have joined all in worthy toil, but you shocked and awed for oil.
You could have shown your constitutions worth, but all protests were strangled at birth.
You could have had a real debate, but news reports are empty dementia.
You could have democracy for real, but so few do vote or care.
So twisted by religious zeal, yet you let Israel run the lair
Of congress, the war has most appeal, even though the treasury s bare.
Those crooks and criminals prosper well, as long as they have another war to sell.
Hell if i were Bush, and he would do it if able, to balance the budget euthanasia of the elderly is the way to go. KIll everyone over 65 who is in poor health, or anyone over 75 and that would cut our medicare tab 80% and then kill all the young kids with terminal diseases and especially the ones with ADDT, who are too hyper to sit still in the classroom. The teacher would love that. NO hassles. If they’re bad, then take them to the principle’s office and let him give them lethal injections. That would save nearly a trillion dollars a year and we would definitely balance the budget and Bush, Cheney and all the other REpublican cultists would go for it. And i’m sure many democrats in Republican clothing would also vote for it. So as a conservative REpublican let’s do what’s right and balance the budget no matter who suffers for it. And by the way, we’d be putting a lot of useless people out of their misery. Bush, Cheney and Co. would love to kill more innocent old women and children. Or now that we are in Poland, we could re-open the gas chambers and ship the useless people there and let the polish leaders do it. They would if Bush ordered them to. AS i see it that’s the best way to balance the budget and get rid of the ones who just take up space and are no use to anyone. Then maybe our health cost system would be affordable. What do you think? What good are these useless people? Let’s get rid of the whole kitten kaboodle. As a conservative Republican i know that at least 75% of my peers will stand behind me on this. And we will do it “compassionately.”
“The simple (and only) way to get the proper taxes levied to pay for wars in real time is to elect a Democratic Congress (including 61 Democratic Senators) and a Democratic president AT THE SAME TIME”
If those 61 senators include Diane Feinstein, who got the nomination of Judge Southwick through the judiciary committee, and Senators Akaka, Nelson, Conrad, Johnson, Lincoln, Pryor and Dorgan, then there won’t be 61 democratic, small d, senators anyway . . .
The vote for the latest nazi nominee was 58-39, and according to the NYT article, Reid, who was “against” it, did little actual work to line up opposition.
Revolution is nigh!
Don’t pay for war crimes & profiteering.
http://wartaxboycott.org/
“…as cover for a president determined to morally and financially bankrupt the nation.”
Determined? You mean, America can be even more financially and morally bankrupt? He’s not scraping us along the barrel bottom yet? What left? Starting the draft on Christmas Eve with age requirements dropped to 12? An Executive Order declaring everything the Executive Branch(s) ever did or say or think Ultra Top Secret Classified until tens years after the end of time? The arrest and indefinite detention of the Easter Bunny? Is the plan to add his face to Mt. Rushmore still in play? Maybe he’ll demand all first born children of either gender be named Bush until further notice? Label the “Democrat Party” a special terrorist organization?
Does this hellhole have a bottom?
Wait until the Iraq war’s cost exceeds that of all other wars combined. Republicans have a disability that prevents them from seeing defense spending as real money. If it’s “patriotic” it must be free, unlike money for social services. Perhaps we should all have bumper stickers that say “Iraq: We Owe China!” Maybe that will get their attention.
Another good and sarcastic bumper sticker would be “Support the Mercenaries!”
It seems there are those who see spending the country so far into debt that only corporations will be able to produce what people need as part of the privatization/deregulation strategy. Look at this article from common dreams.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1011-22.htm
Aw, just had a good laugh over Laddy’s comments. Yes, well Cheney is over 65 and he is clearly in bad health and his mental health is even worse. And then there is Daddy Bush and Barb…both is bad health. I tell you what, let’s refine it further…anyone taking more than two prescriptions, you know, the ones the doc or NPs or PAs write out, must be on the boat to Poland! Anyone who is classified as “obese”, anyone who is anorexic or bulemic, anyone who is mentally deranged or who has a little finger longer than the middle one…or anyone with grey hair or auburn hair…and the list goes on!
Seriously, I have patients in their 70s who already think this government is trying to kill them…because the Medicaid laws have changed so much no doctor can spend more than 15 minutes with them…so these Elders can’t talk about the 25 different prescriptions that are making them crazy, or aphasic or any other “ic” you want to name…the Elders can’t talk about their life, their depression, etc. Their doctors don’t care about them because they have to pay for their malpractice insurance and no malpractice lawyer wants to talk to the Elders because they don’t win cases!!
Who can be proud of what we are doing to our children and our Elders? Who can be proud? We are ashamed, so many of us. Ashamed and we should be. Yet all we do is write to each other…and when we go to the streets we get cordoned off. How did the Code Pink women get in to Congress?
Dichterfreund,
“The vote for the latest nazi nominee was 58-39, and according to the NYT article, Reid, who was “against” it, did little actual work to line up opposition.”
And the point of this statement, which was to allegedly object to having Democrats write tax laws, is what(?).
yeah well gem:
old people are not cost effective..
have had this vision since the boy george
established the killing fields in texas–
we old folk like give it all away
‘n hitch to texas
‘n folks who know will give us a ride
and we party a bit
and join into the long
serpentine line with rope and such
just like the world that walt created
‘n when we reach the head of the line
we choose our most favorite tune
‘n the good ole boys of texas indeed do
“slip the juice to us bruce”
‘n we slide to the conveyer belt
which takes us to the ovens
so aptly designed by
mr. eichmann
the man who understood just how hard
it is to kill and dispose
of millions..
Just heard on tv that Iraq is going to cost us over two trillion dollars and that’s 22 thousand dollars for each American man, woman and child.
Daniel David,
What are your issues? Single-payer, out of Iraq, modernize worker’s benefits to be in line with Europe (shorter work-week, more vacation time, paid maternal/paternal leave), shut down School of the Americas, Range or IRV, no nukes, etc?
Do you really see any Democrat, perhaps other than Kucinich or Gravel, who’s genuinely interested in this? We don’t need to elect someone who’ll merely talk the talk. 200 years of that led to Bush. We need walking the walk at this point.
We’ve had a Democrat war president before. And in Chicago in ‘68 they endorsed another hawk. Was life for the anti-war crowd just rosy back then? Will we go to bed glad at night when Hillary is leading us into Iran perhaps with a military draft (as LBJ), or we lick our wounds until the next Rethug comes along (as we did back when we had another Clinton between the Bushes)?
It may be that Hillary’s job is to keep the mideast in a holding pattern, as was Bill’s, between expansion phases. But King George II is leaving the Republic in an awfully sorry state. I’d say our way out now is better if the bottom falls out than if we try to climb out of it.
Do you think if Congress didn’t pony up the money, Bush would pull the rug from under the soldiers and leave them hangin’ in Iraq just to prove his point? Are Americans stupid enough to think if the spending bill wasn’t passed that the soldiers would just be left to fend for themselves and that the blame laid with Congress and not their Commander in Chief? Call his bluff.
I have read the true military spending is $950 billion every year when expenditure outside of DOD budget is considered. Retirement, VA, NASA (launching military satelites), Energy (making nuclear weapons), interest on debt, etc. Entire rest of world combined is less than $600 billion. Iraq pre-invasion was $1 billion.
What is the difference between Republicans and the democrats? I really don’t know anymore. However I see that the institutions supposed to represent the interest of the people of USA are doing the best to defend the interest of large corporations as well as their own political career.
This is a pityful state of todays US goverment and their institutions. It still amazes me that US is lecturing the rest of the world about democracy.
Beside the gigantic cost for the taxpayer of those illegal wars, the cost of loss of credibility is as important as the cost of the wars themselves.
Human rights are in China non existant but Condi Rice is rather quiet about this. Even if the Dhaila Lhama was invited to the White House, this was only made to embarasse the Chinese dictatorship rather than liberating Thibet and introduce human rights and democracy to China.
However Europe is also rather quiet about China and also other dictatorship but at least they don’t take the initiative to invade other countries.
I’d be a hypocrite to what I just posted, regarding language, to Dowd’s article if I didn’t transmute the energy of Scheer’s ending paragraph:
Now is the time to sharply decry the looting of the public treasury, now is the time to lift the facade of crony privatization, now is the time to measure the heroic sacrifice of the US Troops against the actions on the ground of a president and vice president which are morally and financially bankrupting the nation.
Now is the time to use the measuring stick of US Troop nobility against the ignobility of the Bush/Cheney administration and CALL TO IMPEACH!
Politicians will be politicians, it is up to The People to maintain the staunch verve required to resurrect the American Spirit.
Watch Aaron Russo’s America: From Freedom to Fascism for a way out of this quagmire and vote for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries if you still trust the system. Otherwise, “Just Say No” on April 15th, 2008.
War funding is NOT supporting the troops! Who thinks that if we bring the troops home, they will not get next months paycheck?
To Paul Bramscher,
Thanks for asking, “What are your (my) issues?”
Probably my number one is avoiding any more “strict constructionists” sent to the U.S. Supreme Court. A close second is universal health care (single payer is best, but can settle for other plans if they include NO selective medical underwriting and “community” rating.)
I favor the idea of income and capital gains taxes levied much heavier at the high end to pay for wars in real time, so as to cause the payers of those taxes to question (and end) the wars. I want a leadership who will not privatize Social Security so as to remove both the “social” part and the “security” part. I want a return to complete separation of church and state, and an IRS with a hair trigger to cancel the tax-exempt status of any non-profit that even touches politics, including especially churches.
I want a president who emanates the tone of America being for INDIVIDUALS to have more rights than corporations.
I rail on and on about Democrats, not because they’re so great (they aren’t), but because I know there can be no progress on anything above without a lot (lot) of them in office.
Daniel David October 25th, 2007 12:10 pm
Why do Corporations have rights to begin with? They are by definition Fictitious Entities. I read recently about Chief Justice Roberts talking about Corp. rights, are they in the Constitution? I don’t think so. I’m not really asking just you but you mention them in your manifesto.
Posted some comments yesterday and found a very creative related discussion: Enjoy !
complete article:
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/08/war-on-iraq-threatens-us-economy-as.html
“ The War In Iraq Threatens US Economy As Mass Murder Ceases To Be Profitable.”
” Bone headed GOP “trickle down economics” and imperial oil theft abroad threatens an economic train wreck, indeed, democracy itself. A new study confirms that military spending is an economic albatross, a depressing drag on the economy, that will increase joblessness, deprive millions more of an education. Military spending and Pentagon waste soak up federal monies better spent on education, infrastructure, and job creation. Pentagon waste takes monies out of circulation and depresses the economy. Only a tiny part of the economy will benefit –the filthy rich already bought and paid for by Bush’s unfair, inequitable tax cuts for what he called “his base”. Wealth does not trickle down.”