Hidden Costs to the War in Iraq -- The Problems We Face

I make routine visits to our troops in the field and to those recovering at our military hospitals. I'm inspired by their service and dedication to this great country. But, the America they serve and protect today is far different than the America that existed prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In just a few weeks, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq. Five years later, the political and economic situation on the ground has changed little, while the rest of the world, including the United States, has changed significantly.

We are familiar with the visible costs associated with the war in Iraq and the sacrifices that our men and women in uniform and their families are making. We've lost nearly 4,000 troops, over 28,700 have been wounded and we have appropriated over $535 billion. But, we are less familiar with the hidden costs, and these will have long-term consequences. Every penny of the $535 billion we've appropriated thus far has been borrowed, meaning that the same Americans sacrificing in Iraq today will be paying for this borrowed war for the rest of their lives. It is estimated that the long-term costs of injuries alone will be at least a further $300 billion.

Since the war began, the international credibility and respect of the United States has plummeted while instability has grown throughout the region. We've seen a dramatic rise in the economic, military and global influence of both Russia and China. An emboldened Iran seeks to more aggressively assert influence in the region. Our NATO allies are unwilling or unable to provide an additional 3,000 troops for Afghanistan. And the price of oil has climbed from $27.18 per barrel before the war began to $92.82 today.

Here at home, we are borrowing $343 million every day to finance the war in Iraq while shortchanging our domestic needs. The American economy is slipping towards a recession as our housing market and financial sector are experiencing serious crises. Gas at the pump has increased from $1.76 per gallon before the war began to its current price of $3.07 per gallon. Our national debt has ballooned by $2.75 trillion, increasing by nearly $1 million per minute, while the value of the American dollar relative to other currencies has plummeted.

In the military, we have seen a deterioration of readiness, equipment and recruitment standards. We are not able to maintain the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan without breaking the military's own guidelines. Before the Iraq war, 80 percent of all Army units and almost 100 percent of active-duty combat units were rated at the highest level of military readiness. Just the opposite exists today. Virtually all of our active-duty combat units in the United States, and all of our guard units, are rated not combat-ready. This means that we can not sustain the current troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan let alone provide a credible deterrent to other potential adversaries.

In order to meet recruitment goals, the Army is accepting a higher percentage of recruits who would previously have been disqualified from service because of the lack of a high school diploma, a previous criminal record, drug or alcohol problems or a health condition. Since the invasion of Iraq, the percentage of Army recruits with a high school diploma has decreased from 94 percent to 71 percent. Before the war began, 4.6 percent of Army recruits required a waiver for a criminal record; today that figure has risen to 11.2 percent.

As I've said before, our ground forces in the United States simply do not have their required equipment, and the equipment of our ground forces overseas is wearing out. It will take years and tens of billions of dollars to rehabilitate this equipment and to re-equip the force. The Air Force operates and maintains a fleet of aircraft with an average age of 24 years. When I left Vietnam in 1967, the average age of our aircraft was 8.5 years. The Navy's current shipbuilding request is grossly inadequate to meet the goal of a 313 ship fleet while maintaining our naval superiority.

I haven't even mentioned the fiscal challenges we face with health care, education, infrastructure, and the Medicare and Social Security programs.

These aren't Democratic problems or Republican problems. These are American problems.

Our next President and the American people must understand that it will require tremendous resources and strong bipartisan and international cooperation to begin to solve these problems. The future of our great country depends on it.

Comments

[realpolitic]

Rep. Murtha, I thank you for your heroic patriotism and your military service to our country. Please keep speaking out forcibly and with feeling on this unjust war. America needs your strong voice now more than ever. Bush has almost single-handedly destroyed our country and its fine values!

[GPRogueCowboy]

Great Article!
Now if we could just get it on the National Media Outlets everyday.

[RoseMerry]

Congressman Murtha is a Great American and so much better than we deserve.

I dream of the traitors who rules us now having to serve the rest of their lifes in the hospitals and orphanages of Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan - cleaning up after the suffering they have caused.

No justice, no peace.

[TheMisfortuneTeller]

Congressman Murtha, as a victim/veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-72) I simply could not believe how you and other Vietnam Veterans in Congress (like Senators John Kerry and John McCain, et al) let a draft-dodging dyslexic dwarf chimpanzee like Deputy Dubya Bush sell you another Gulf of Tonkin in the Bay of Goats. You keep claiming how badly you feel about our dead and wounded military personnel, but you apparently don't feel badly enough to stop sending ever more of them to death and maiming. Frankly, your porkbarrel lust for ever more Warfare Welfare and Make-work Militarism -- i.e., more guns, more tanks, more bullets, more bombs, more dumb officers and enlisted recruits, more, more, more, always more -- makes all your crocodile tears for the American and Iraqi victims of this senseless shit too ludicrous to lampoon.
For your information and edification, Congrssman, America doesn't have too few weapons or too few warriors. America has too many stupid and senseless wars; and it has them because America's bloated and bureaucratic Military-I­ndustrial-­Complex simply has nothing worthwhile to do with itself -- as the events of 9/11/2001 glaringly illustrated -- and so ceaselessly agitates for more needless wars in which to "play a role." The fifty states need national guards for natural disaster relief work. America does NOT need a "professional" foreign legion that keeps getting itself into hot water (and bankrupting the nation) every time we deploy it abroad for any length of time longer than a few months. Not for nothing did the Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce define "Army" as "a class of non-producers who defend the nation by devouring everything that might tempt an enemy to invade." America can't afford your "Army" anymore, Congressman. Start cutting it by 25% oer year and don't stop until someone in the Pentagram learns to hire an accountant who can tell us taxpayers where every last damn wasted dollar has gone, who got it, and for what.

[Purple Girl]

those are the Reasons that any Candidate that supports Or has supported this corproate sponsored War is NOT FIT TO HOLD OFFICE!
Voted for troops on theGround in Afghanistan- wrong
Voted for invasioninto Iraq- Wrong
Voted for continued funding (w/o Acct'ing)- Wrong
voted for the Patriot Act- Wrong
SITS ON THE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE -WRONG!
No to mention their spinelessness when it comes to holding this adminstration and it's Corp agencies Accountable for ANYTHING!
Come one WAr Crimes, Treason,Crimes against Humaity, Reckless Endangerment, Fraud, ABUSE OF POWER. I don't give a shit which charge sends them to GITMO- but pick one and throw their asses away for life (unless a heavier sentence is legal).
I greatly Appreciate your work- but there are those who claim to be of OUR party who are working as Republicans and Corporationists.
they're about a Democrat as Lieberman.
A man of your integrity would help this country emmensely by calling out these leading Dems and their complicity in tis corrupt agenda.

[zizyphus]

If the United States stopped acting like the dictator of the world, interfering in local politics to tilt elections towards the right, the world might respect us. Instead, we invade sovereign nations unilaterally, destroy them, and expect them to believe we are there in their best interests.

We need to extract all military from every occupied country, bring them home, take care of them properly, then set about rebuilding America's infrastructure which has been ruined by decades of greed and corruption. Your military industrial complex has just about sucked the life out of our country. Why should we have even one grain of faith in anything the military proposes? They don't need any more weapons. What we need is a vision of our country as a leader in peace, not the destroyer of all dreams.

Shift that largess over to education and make sure every person has skills, a trade, a profession, so that they can make their greatest contribution toward reshaping America's future.

[shep65]

I watched a TV program the other night where one of the commentators said many Americans were war weary and that was the reason there was not a lot of protesting against this war. I think that she was right about the weary part but wrong about the war part. I am not weary about the war, I am weary about the congress of the Unites States not doing anything to stop it. Congressman Murtha has spoken publicly many times about his feeling about this illegal invasion but Congress has done nothing to stop it.
I agree with all the other bloggers that the democrats were elected to stop the war in 2006 and have failed miserably to live up to their mandate.
The weariness comes from the deep rooted feeling that we(the people opposed to George Bush and his facist politics) have been ignored by the congress men and women they voted into office and nothing we say or do will change anything.
Not only has the congress not stopped the war but they have continued to enable these criminals to destroy this country.
How many ways can it be said. Stop funding this war, stop the corporate pillaging of our country, stop allowing torture, kidnapping, illegal wiretaps, stop the transfer of wealth from the working class to gazillionaire international financiers. What the fuck do these people not understand? Thats what I am weary of!

[transendentilist]

If impeachment statutes were not written for the likes of bush and cheney, who in hell where they written for??????????????

Pelosi and reid are out of a job come election time. Impeachment should never have been, "taken off the table."
Another bonus from impeachment would be to show the rest of the world that our democracy works. (when used)

[HippieChick]

One more thing I would like to speak to, Rep. Murtha. I agree with you: "These aren't Democratic problems or Republican problems. These are American problems." However, Americans only have the election system as a recourse. If we go to the polls and elect people we believe will stop the maddness, and they won't, what is left to do? We have lost elections we can have faith in (thanks Diebold). We march in the streets; we are ignored. We write our congresspeople; we are ignored. Anger builds, because we are ignored. We are aware of every fact cited in your post. We protest, and are ignored. We have lost our government by and for the people...i­t has been stolen from us. Telling us the details of our desperate situation does nothing; tell us how you will repair the damage...t­hen do it.

[MAX1]

.

The problem Congressman,

IS AN IMPOTENT CONGRESS that refuses to hold members of this Administration accountable.

.

[lisakaz]

Exactly. And we cannot begin to address the SERIOUS problems exacerbated by this idiotic "war" of choice without ending operations there. It is a lead balloon. Bu$h has attempted to gut America for the sake of rewarding his already rich cronies. This is why he needed -- needs -- to be impeached. I cannot believe no one acts in DC like he's a lame duck given Bill Clinton was called one on the night of his re-election by David Brinkley. Yet Bu$h wants to tie down America as a permanent occurpier with his extra-Congressional deals. And he's tried to start a war with Iran with a bogus confrontation.

What will it take for Congress to defy him already? How often will he cry wolf and how often will his treason be coddled? When is enough, enough?

Our Constitution has been walked all over as "that scrap of paper" kinda like Bethman Hollweg on Belgian neutrality. This should be intollerable. STOP HIM. STOP THIS FISA MADNESS.

Thank you.

[noamjunior]

Gas at the pump has increased from $1.76 per gallon before the war began to its current price of $3.07 per gallon

which is why Bush and the Gop think the war is a great success- Big Profit$ for the main contributors of the GOP - OIL COMPANIES

damn right IRAQ was all about OIL
it was about ,making it more scarce to
JACK UP THE PRICE

[hiplib]

Blah blah blah - empty meaningless words. We elected you and the other Dems to Congress to end this terrible war so you do not have to tell us how bad it is. You had the chance to end it and instead the Democratic Congress we voted for betrayed us and voted not to end the war but to escalate it - the "surge" - and continue to fund it. It is now not just Bush's war but yours too.

[jubo]

And who are the countries the US is borrowing from borrowing from? Is the government borrowing although it has the money? It would be proper to reimburse the Beaumarchais family for bankrolling the US, sorry Constitutional Army when ... oh, never mind...

I have a feeling the countries 'lending' this money are investing in weakening this one.

[sfbayani]

Thank you for this.
This argues for my contention that there is definitely a direct correlation between the costs of Iraq War and the economic downturn we experience today and for many years.

I certainly would like to hear from all the presidential candidates what they think about this, especially from Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who sided with President Bush for the war.