Bush's $1 Trillion War on Terror: Even Costlier Than Expected

[DogPoundPup]

Source: Yahoo

The news that President Bush's war on terror will soon have cost the U.S. taxpayer $1 trillion - and counting - is unlikely to spread much Christmas cheer in these tough economic times. A trio of recent reports - none by the Bush Administration - suggests that sometime early in the Obama presidency, spending on the wars started since 9/11 will pass the trillion-dollar mark. Even after adjusting for inflation, that's four times more than America spent fighting World War I, and more than 10 times the cost of 1991's Persian Gulf War (90 percent of which was paid for by U.S. allies). The war on terror looks set to surpass the cost the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, to be topped only by World War II's price tag of $3.5 trillion.

The cost of sending a single soldier to fight for a year in Afghanistanor Iraq is about $775,000 - three times more than in other recent wars, says a new report from the private but authoritative Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. A large chunk of the increase is a result of the Administration cramming new military hardware into the emergency budget bills it has been using to pay for the wars. (See pictures of U.S. troops in Iraq)

These costs, of course, pale alongside the price paid by the nearly 5,000 U.S. troops who have lost their lives in the conflicts - not to mention the wounded - and the families of all the casualties. And President Bush insists that their sacrifice, and the expenditure on the wars, has helped prevent a recurrence of 9/11. "We could not afford to wait for the terrorists to attack again," he said last week at the Army War College. "So we launched a global campaign to take the fight to the terrorists abroad, to dismantle their networks, to dry up their financing and find their leaders and bring them to justice."

But many Americans may suffer a moment of sticker shock from the conclusions of the CSBA report, and similar assessments from the Government Accounting Office and Congressional Research Service, which make clear that the nearly $1 trillion already spent is only a down payment on the war's long-term costs. The trillion-dollare figure does not, for example, include long-term health care for veterans, thousands of whom have suffered crippling wounds, or the interest payments on the money borrowed by the Federal government to fund the war. The bottom lines of the three assessments vary: The CSBA study says $904 billion has been spent so far, while the GAO says the Pentagon alone has spent $808 billion through last September. The CRS study says the wars have cost $864 billion, but it didn't factor inflation into its calculations.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20081226/us_time/08599186836700

[trusty elf]

1. All of that money down the drain

and the terrorism problem has only been exacerbated.

What a colossal failure * has been. (Except, of course, for those cronies whose pockets shrub has lined with gold.)


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[acmavm]

20. Just think what it would be like right now if bush** and the vermin he fronted

for would have succeeded and the measures, signing statements, and crimes they committed would have allowed them to steal another election.

(Excuse me, it's early and I'm trying to find a bright bit of news so that I can tell myself 'there must be some kinda way out of this place...' and that someday we will be able to let our poor country recover from these 8 long years of OUR occupation by these neocon thugs.)

[xxqqqzme]

37. Exactly - the bottom of that drain emptied

into the pockets of the war privat/profit/eers.

I'd like to know what %age of that 775,000 cost per soldier goes to privatization of the military.

[unhappycamper]

2. Well, the puzzle palace admitted the cost

of the wars and occupations is already $904 billion to date.

In the meantime the Navy ($10.5 billion destroyers, $600 million LCS boats and $500 million LAPDs and National Security Cutters) and Air Force ($355 million F-22s, $239 million F-35s, $200 million+ C-17s. $69 million F/A-18s and the Missile shield) is pissing away money like crazy while Paulson is emptying the bank.

That doesn't include the cost to reset, aka replacing all the shit they've worn out in the occupations. That also does not include the cost of medical care for this generation of soldiers.

All in all, these are pretty expensive adventures.


on edit to add: $2.5 billion submarines, $6.8 billion for the latest Nimitz carrier and $11.5 billion for Ford-class aircraft carries

[izzie]

3. Seems USSR was right and also Bush is good at spending

other peoples money. He has always done that well. Time to give up on wars we can not win and do not have the money to fight. Bush never would have looked good on a white horse any how.

[Grinchie]

4. Thats strange, I saw an economist report in 2005 that showed about a Trillion

Mainly because the external costs, such as healthcare, fuel and other inconvenient truths were totally omitted by the Pentagon.

If you want to see what a real treatment of the cost of war looks like, read this http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~lbilmes/paper/iraqnew.pdf

[tclambert]

5. Yet it would have cost too much to fix the levees in New Orleans before Katrina hit.

That would have cost hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars. And everybody knows a million is a lot. Trillion? You're just making up numbers, there.

[tclambert]

6. And it would cost too much for Universal Health Care.

Hundreds of BILLIONS. Now, that's a lot of money. Can't waste that kind of money helping people.

[tclambert]

7. And it would cost too much to send all American kids to college.

Billions! Billions! All wasted on education when we could have a highly profitable war? Ridiculous.

[tclambert]

8. A crazy idea in a science magazine said we could build a railroad between North America and Europe

for $100 Billion. It would island hop from Canadian arctic islands to Greenland to Iceland to Scotland, with tunnels under the ocean bits. They were basing this on the costs of the Chunnel, the tunnel under the English Channel. Crazy idea. Probably underestimated the cost, too. No one in our government would spend so much on such a pointless project.

[tclambert]

9. And BTW, the moon program cost $135 Billion in 2005 dollars, spread over 13 years.

For a trillion, Wernher von Braun could have given us trailer parks on Mars.

[mwb970]

10. bush has bankrupted our nation.

It's just one of his many, many crimes, none of which he will be held accountable for. What a sleazy, worthless jerk of a president he has been.

[natrat]

15. please ...all those enabling democrats reid frank pelosi schumer bankrupted this nation

[Golden Raisin]

30. And the bankrupting was not just financial.

The emptying of the national coffers (still ongoing fullsteam via Secretary Paulson) was accompanied by a non-stop assault on the Constitution and the degredation of Democracy.

[tclambert]

11. Besides, your numbers have to be wrong. We were assured the Iraq war would pay for itself.

"When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer, we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international community." - Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

"Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance, largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no doubt that they will." - Richard Perle, chairman of The Pentagon's Defense Policy Board

"It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars." - Kenneth Pollack,former director for Persian Gulf affairs,National Security Council

"There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be US taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon." - Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense


These are serious, responsible people. Surely, surely they would not lie to us.

[SpiralHawk]

12. "Smirk." - Republicon Crony War Profiteers

"What's good for us, is good for us. Too bad about all the people who got dead or maimed, or had their tax dollar squandered, because of the humungous pack of lies that Commander AWOL & VP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' told. Deal with it. Smirk."

- Republicon Crony War Profiteers

[AlbertCat]

29. War profiteers?

Who needs a war? Before the war....which I must admit they were planning from the get go....for profit....there was tax-cuts-for-the-rich profiteering, then SS profiteering which didn't go so well, and now it's bailout profiteering.

Obviously, the function of government is to grab as much money as possible for yourself.

Know we know.

[bullimiami]

13. mission accomplished. the actual goals of the 'war on terror'

were to transfer massive wealth and consolidate power.

done and done.

[Lasher]

14. Did Terror surrender yet?

I'll bet Terror is running out of money too.

[eringer]

16. And What About Bin Laden?

I bet he is caught or killed within 90 days of January 20th. There are no family ties between the BHO family and the Bin Ladens like there is with the Bush clan.

[SHRED]

17. And to think...

... the "I'm a fiscal conservative" crowd cheered during "shock and awe".


----

[geckosfeet]

19. "Fiscal conservative" - as rare as bigfoot these days.

[DallasNE]

18. Two Important Items Not Mentioned

Our current financial crisis is in no small way made worse by these wars because of the off-book nature of how they have been funded. Off-book accounting shows up over and over and over again as a devise to pull the wool over the eyes of investors and taxpayers. The trillions of dollars in asset value wiped off the books is in large measure an indirect cost of these wars.

Likewise, bin Laden has said his goal is to bankrupt the corrupt Western governments. On that front bin Laden is the clear winner. And these two items are linked at the hip, make no mistake about it.

[Baby Snooks]

21. And who is Obama's Secretary of Defense?

If you're going to slam Bush you need to slam Obama over his decision to keep Bush's Secretary of Defense who has no intention of ending the "war on terror" and if he does manage to reduce the number of troops in Iraq he will merely move them to Afghanistan. And then move them back to Iraq. Change? It seems that indeed the more things change the more they stay the same.

[natrat]

22. yea but at least we get lots of "hope"

[dothemath]

34. back to civics class for you .................

This may come as a shock but to avoid overloading your pea brain, read carefully:
PRESIDENT Obama
Hired underling: Gates

Should things not go as Obama plans, he will make the necessary changes to see that things do go as he, Obama, plans.

Maybe you have gotten so used to a chimp puppet 'in charge', you have forgotten what a leader is and does.

Good luck with the civics class.

[mwb970]

40. Gee, for a minute there I was actually enjoying reading this thread.

Thanks for bringing me back to earth with your anti-Obama post. For a few seconds I thought this was actually the Democratic Underground! Guess not.

[Broadslidin]

23. Protecting Exxon/Mobil and 'No Bid Oil Contracts' is priority "One" for Americans.

Going back in our history to Our Fearless Leaders
ordering the mass slaughter
of U.S. colonized Filipinos in 1899.

Well documented by Samuel Clemmons.

(After all, our military had just been issued a
brand new machine gun to try out and
murder made easy when faced with an
alien looking people harboring socialistic tendencies.

More soon.... :nuke:

[lonestarnot]

24. Cowards' preemptive wars based on lies are expensive in terms of both lives and treasure.

[Turbineguy]

25. With Bush, $1 Trillion

is getting to be chump change.

[classysassy]

26. What fools we

(morans)morons be.We will let the criminals off the hook,because our elected crooks are their soulmates.

[JohnnyLib2]

27. And this was so terribly obvious from the outset....

Rec.

[Botany]

28. Iraq will cost 3 trillion

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html

washingtonpost.com
THE RECKONING
The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More

By Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz
Sunday, March 9, 2008; Page B01

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure
has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending.
You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.

[DeepModem Mom]

31. K&R

[Lorien]

32. "So we launched a global campaign to take the fight to the terrorists abroad,

to dismantle their networks, to dry up their financing and find their leaders and bring them to justice."

1). The "terrorists" were never in Iraq.

2). You had a chance to catch them at Tora Bora, now they're in Pakistan

3). Dry up their financing? Saudi Arabia has only gotten RICHER since 9/11, thanks to your Petro Dollar deals.

4). So where is bin Laden again?

5). Why is the media STILL not call him out on this BS? Does anyone actually fall for it anymore?

[tabasco]

33. But ... but ... but the freepers told us we were going to kick their ass and take their gas

and the war would pay for itself!!!!

:shrug:

[nolabels]

36. With that information and a dollar you could buy a hot cup of coffee

I no longer feel like a alarmist.

Mostly i just feel like one of those 'we told you so' :argh:

[quidam56]

35. Bush/Cheney are TOXIC TERRORISTS to Appalachia

They sure like blowing stuff up don't they ? http://www.wisecountyissues.com Kept us safe my ass..........

[ThoughtCriminal]

38. If we had BURNED it - we would be more secure

It was not just wasted, it was spent in ways that have actually made us less safe, damaged our national reputation, bankrupted our financial security and empowered our enemies.

[McLowery]

39. Only a trillion? That's still a bargain at the moment.

I am surprised by the aura of surprise surrounding the cost of "The war on terror". What a joke. A war on an ideology has no price tag on it nor does it have a spending limit. It's the most expensive thing since the war on drugs and the Vietnam police action. (they didn't want to call Vietnam a real war so they could do whatever the fuck they wanted to do with the whole god damn thing.) This is how our beady eyed, rodent elect have been doing things since the Korean war!

[HopeHoops]

41. Rediculous. I said it would cost more than a trillion right after the invasion!