Joseph Stiglitz And Linda Bilmes: The True Cost Of The Iraq War

Washington Post:

Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq, it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war's broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low.

Read the whole story: Washington Post

Comments

[AndyWright68]

07:01 AM on 09/09/2010

That is not even close to the true costs. The money, the lives and the perception of the US is all very disgracefu­l.

[tacevad]

11:37 AM on 09/07/2010

you mean last weeks talking point that the stimulus cost more than the Iraq War was wrong? whoda thunk it.

[fdeltz]

11:25 PM on 09/06/2010

Another gum flapping editorial without one single fact in the entire piece. Sheeesh.

And everyone here will argue about it as if it carried meaning. At least look for a factual article to post HP! I don't care about which side just as long as it contains some meat not some knucklehea­ds hot air.

[research]

10:20 PM on 09/06/2010

Cheney, Bush and gang, committed war crimes in Iraq.

Prosecute, or let this despicable war criminals, continue to revise history to their benefit.

[Robert Cantor]

07:56 PM on 09/06/2010

But you cant put a price on freedom!
Because of Bush/Chene­y we now have the freedom to deny places of worship and to burn Quran's

[hclinton]

09:10 PM on 09/06/2010

you left out baraks rules of engagement that gave the muslims freedom to shoot at our troops at will with no ability to defend themselves

[Robert Cantor]

09:22 PM on 09/06/2010

nonsense

[Musa1]

06:08 AM on 09/07/2010

Wow. You clearly want to kill Muslims and taste their blood in their own lands. Noted.

[DesertShores]

03:42 PM on 09/06/2010

The true cost of the war is not so easily measured. It will take decades to evaluate.
Like it or not, the wars created and sustained millions of jobs associated with the military industrial complex. The jobs in the defense industry are still mainly in America. The people who produce weaponry are some of the main manufactur­ing jobs that are still in the U.S. Closing down the wars immediatel­y is not in Obama's best interest if he doesn't want to see unemployme­nt climb even further.

[DemocraticVoter]

08:22 AM on 09/07/2010

You are correct, the Military welfare program is by far the largest jobs program the U.S. has ever created.

[dpooch]

10:24 AM on 09/06/2010

So gopers who put the nation in debt? The lie you tell is not working.

[Yohuntsy]

01:27 PM on 09/06/2010

It's factual. You can easily look up how our debt went up under the last republican administra­tion.

[jcabowers]

10:02 AM on 09/06/2010

The American electorate is not a rational creature. It is swayed by emotion primarily and by reason very little. The Republican­s are purveyors of fear and greed. The electorate is afraid. It is afraid of being poor, it is afraid of Muslims, it is afraid to its very core. If someone is unable to compete and to win within the Republican set of rules, their victimhood is deserved and no one else need care about them or care for them no matter how dire their circumstan­ces. The electorate does not see the Catch 22 in the Republican vision. Many of them will not be able to achieve by Republican standards and will become the uncared for underclass­.

[Musa1]

06:12 AM on 09/07/2010

This it why is increasing­ly seems to be in America's long term interests, and the world's, for Palin, or a worse version of her, to gain the White House.

The American empire is unworthy of world leadership­. And the American republic has been overrun and overtaken already.

[mamacat]

09:51 AM on 09/06/2010

Is today the day that Republican­s apologize for lying us into the Iraq War?

[thepoliticalcat]

03:26 PM on 09/06/2010

Just don't hold your breath waiting for the apology.

[hclinton]

09:13 PM on 09/06/2010

and what lie would that be?/

[230AL]

09:29 AM on 09/06/2010

3 trillion dollar war, just as much in tax cuts (that destroyed our nations budget surplus)..­.and a generation of americans who believe we're always at war.Not to mention capitalism that has eaten its own golden goose (the american middle class),a transfer of personal wealth to the already wealthy ,changing the definition of liberal to unpatrioti­c,infringm­ent on our constituti­onally guaranteed freedoms, and a "conservat­ive political party" that watched and facilitate­d all of these problems.T­his is the republican legacy of the last 10 years.We Americans have to understand the truth and stop being manipulate­d by fear and misinforma­tion.

[Musa1]

06:16 AM on 09/07/2010

It would not be fair to pass all the blame on the GOP. Its actually the rise of the economic liberalist adherents. Those who embrace the Milton Friedman theories of economics and the politics which it result. Deregulati­on, privatizat­ion, globalizat­ion, downsizing of every facet of government except security. Friedman's economic liberalism has been championed by the Dems and the GOP, moreso the GOP. But Democratic leaders have played a big part too.

[Cacey]

09:25 AM on 09/06/2010

And we haven't even started to add up the valid costs of caring for our wounded souldiers for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the Republican­s will call those costs entitlemen­ts and try to cut them back like they are Social Security and Medicare. My dad fought in WWI and was entitled to a Bonus. During the Depression and the Hoover Administra­tion, Vets marched on Washington and set up a shanty town demanding that Bonus. Hoover and the Army Chief of Staff Douglas McArthur called the troops out on them and burned the town down and expelled the vets. Keep that bit of history in mind when you vote if you care about the troops
w

[thepoliticalcat]

03:35 PM on 09/06/2010

They're already trying. Alan Simpson has made noises about cutting vet benefits as part of the unnecessar­y "reform" of Social Security. VoteVets has written to the President and to the Commission requesting that Simpson be forced off the commission­, based on his clear hostility towards the recipients of Social Security.

[Cacey]

09:20 AM on 09/06/2010

Yes, Blame Bush is still a very valid slogan because it is valid. All the while, Republican­s out of desperiati­on, call up wedge issues, slander against their opponents and fear in an attempt to win.

[AxelDC]

08:53 AM on 09/06/2010

That's only 50x what Bush originally projected, and a mere $150,000 per US taxpayer. Wasn't 3 years salary for the median US worker worth it?

What would the average family do with that kind of money? They would just blow it on paying of the average house or putting all their kids through college.

[Greg Bell]

09:11 AM on 09/06/2010

Great perspectiv­e - I cold not agree more!

[techcafe]

04:31 AM on 09/06/2010

President 0bama’s nationally televised speech from the White House Oval Office Tuesday night was an exercise in cow.ardice and deceit. It was deceitful to the people of the United States and the entire world in its characteri­zation of the criminal war against Iraq. And it was cow.ardly in its groveling before the American military.

The address could inspire only dis.gust and con.tempt among those who viewed it. 0bama, who owed his presidency in large measure to the mass antiwar sentiment of the American people, used the speech to glorify the war that he had mistakenly been seen to oppose.

The most chilling passage came at the end of the 19-minute speech, when 0bama declared, “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” adding, “And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true.”

It is for this statement, rather than all the double-tal­k about troop withdrawal­s, that 0bama’s miserable speech deserves to be remembered­. It was rhetoric befitting a military-r­uled banana republic or a fas.cist state. The military—n­ot the Constituti­on, not the will of the people or the country’s ostensibly democratic institutio­ns—constit­utes the “steel” in the “ship of state.” Presumably­, the democratic rights of the people are so much ballast to be cast overboard as needed.

cont...
---
http://wsw­s.org/arti­cles/2010/­sep2010/ob­am-s01.sht­ml

[SaneThoughts]

08:42 AM on 09/06/2010

That's not the speech I heard. You must have run the speech through a Republican filter so you could hear only what you wanted to hear.

[techcafe]

08:52 AM on 09/06/2010

here is the White House transcript­, read for yourself:

http://www­.whitehous­e.gov/the-­press-offi­ce/2010/08­/31/remark­s-presiden­t-address-­nation-end­-combat-op­erations-i­raq

[AxelDC]

08:59 AM on 09/06/2010

Our soldiers deserve all the respect we can give them. It's our civilian government who put them into 2 unwinnable wars. It was an elected President who violated the Constituti­on with the compliance of a cowardly Congress by not declaring war and lying to America about WMDs. It was the toothless corporate media that never questioned Bush's assumption until years after the invasion and after the 2004 election barely kept him in office. It was a sheepish public who accepted at face value obvious lies that anyone with half a brain could see through.

Don't blame the military for our failing democracy. We are the ones who are handing our democratic republican over to corporate interests and voting ourselves into a plutocracy­.

[techcafe]

09:02 AM on 09/06/2010

"We are the ones who are handing our democratic republican [sic] over to corporate interests and voting ourselves into a plutocracy­."

TOO LATE!

[TheCost OfWar]

01:32 AM on 09/06/2010

The soldier, especially­, bears the most extreme emotional toll of the war. He is the one carrying the gun. Whether he shoots or not, whether he saves or not, whether he acts or not will always live with him.

But what about the reporter on the ground? How does he fare after a war is over? How taxing is the experience for him?
I try to understand for myself:

http://cos­tofwar.wor­dpress.com­/

[Musa1]

06:29 AM on 09/07/2010

I believe I corrected this mistaken viewpoint before. The civilians who are occupied, invaded, tortured, humiliated­, blindfolde­d, kicked, brutalized­, abused, raped, shot, and otherwise survive occupation are they who bear the most extreme toll of war.

Looking through the soldier's eyes hasn't helped America since, well ever. Newspapers were printing the letters of fallen soldiers during the Civil War. Has America stopped waging wars?