This effort in Iraq by the USA which was to cost 50 billion dollars, be paid for through oil revenues **and be over and done with by August of 2003 has thus far cost in actual expensed funds over 450 billion dollars ***
Cost of War with no hope of ever recovering any of those funds through oil dollars.
And that is the good news, that is the
low figure.
Oh, and doesn't include any of the money spent thus far in Afghanistan.
The New York Times in January 2007 printed an estimate of the full cost of the war(s) at 1.2 to 2 Trillion Dollars.
LINK Everyone gasped but here we are six months later and no one is arguing that David Leonhardt's figures were off the mark.
Meanwhile, no one is saying, not nobody, much of anything about estimates recently offered of troops levels in the 70,000 range to be in Iraq as late as the year
2017. That's fifteen YEARS longer than what was estimated by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Oh, and this wasn't Mother Jones' writing those figures, it was the
Congressional Budget Office Theirs is a slightly lower figure than the Times, only 1.1 Trillion dollars. What a potential savings that is!!!
But that's only the money. Ican is right. We can get the money, we are the richest fricken country in the world, we can get the money just as Richard Nixon said, we can get it.
But that's not the real cost of this war. Leaving aside, as this President has done, the 3400 dead Americans, thus far there are over 20,000 badly wounded or disabled veterans. The VA, never the best we could offer our wounded -isn't that a shame for the richest nation on earth?--is at the breaking point now in trying to treat the thousands of wounded under it's care. And those are the men and women who have VISIBLE wounds. The trauma of this conflict will bring down horrors upon anyone who serves even one tour of duty over there, (I have two friends who are now both on their second and third tours.) and on their families and communities.
We have done a horrible thing to many of these brave men and women, we have sent them into an unplanned for state of chaos and we as a nation will pay dearly for the myopic visions of this President.
We have so sullied our role as a guiding light of democracy that one would be hard pressed to find a single nation in the world, other than Britain and Australia, who have any trust in our ability to provide justice.
We may still be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but few believe there is any hope that America can lead others to that state.
By the way, the consequences of our leaving without success are as over estimated by this administration as their underestimations were of the cost of the war. We have achieved a level of hatred and distrust by all the sides of this conflict that far exceeds our ability to amend.
Joe(we need to be out by the New Year.)Nation
**January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the budget office had come up with "a number that's something under $50 billion." He and other officials expressed optimism that Iraq itself would help shoulder the cost once the world market was reopened to its rich supply of oil.
MSNBC
You continue to avoid answering the question. Why?