The cost of this war could pay for social security for 75 years..

[southernleftylady]

I heard this on "Hardball" last night .. anyone know where they got this info from?

[TomClash]

1. It's from a paper

presented by Joseph Stiglitz at the American Economics Association meeting in January.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. The fallout from this war is going to make it necessary for us

to spend what could have paid for SS for hundreds of years.

[FloridaPat]

3. Someone came up with the ultimate cost of this fiasco as $2 trillion.

They factored in paying for all the veterans benefits and the disabled benefits. The number of GW1 solders on disability is around 350,000. They were in Iraq only 6 weeks.

[sweetheart]

4. The cost of the war is the end of pax americana

Now that the US government to represent only the interests
of republican white men, behaving nationalistically, it can
never be trusted as a global agent, and in losing this defacto
moral high ground of once-grande peaceful empire; has now
been traded in for unchecked institutionalized greed.

And the internet has done wonders to expose this tyranny of the
corporate greed, in the sense of the world of equal people,
all 6 billions of us going on seven. And nobody in a democracy
has the will or the power to check the massive stinking footprint
of the growing population hoardes, and outside of their expensive
villas, even the upper class will have to live in the polluted sewer
they have endorsed by their corporate subsidy culture.

The high ground can never be won back, the game is up, and bush
has pushed her off the edge, in a slow slide towards bankruptcy and
a footprint-correction towards equality with the lowest wage slavery
on earth. They can paint a new veneer, and pay for new releases of
star trek 99000 to keep the masses lost in television channels,
drugged up to their eyeballs on their sense of power behind
that remote control. The pax is now over, and the world is remade as
blatant rule of force and imperial will. No longer is there any
veneer of civility on the police state, fat government bloated
republican sleeze gross militarism and nuclear bomb developments!
geezz the degeneration of a great america inconceivable even a few
years ago.... to rote police state, a second rate political nation
where all political goodwill has been privateized to the corporates
and the church.

No amount of money can buy it back, not 10 trillion dollars. They
have turned the monopoly board on its side, and the funny printed money
is floating everywhere downward.

[BOSSHOG]

5. All the more reason for republicans to continue the war

Meanwhile the majority of their base who really needs social security continue to support the party at the expense of the country and continue telling themselves they are "conservative." Great master plan huh?

[liberal N proud]

6. Here are some numbers on the what the Iraq war is costing us.

The bill so far: $251 billion
The estimated long-term bill: $1.3 trillion
What $251 billion could have paid for in the U.S. for one year:
 Affordable housing units: 2.3 million or
 Scholarships for university students: 48.7 million or
 Head Start slots for a year: 33 million
What $251 billion acould have paid for around the globe for three years:
 Full funding for global anti-hunger efforts for and
 Full funding of world-wide AIDS programs for and
 Full funding for every child in the world for basic immunizations
Estimated cost of war to date to every U.S. citizen: $894
 Average monthly cost of the Vietnam War, adjusted for infl ation: $5.1 billion
 Average monthly cost of the Iraq War: $5.6 billion
 Amount that military contractor Halliburton has been awarded in contracts: $10.8 billion
 Amount of “questionable” and “unsupported” Halliburton expenditures found by Senate investigators: $1.4 billion
 Increase in Halliburton stock value since March 2003: 375%

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2006/0130quagmire.pdf