Major study: Estimate of Money Costs of Iraq War to US over $1 trillion

[cloudythescribbler]

From TPM Cafe:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/5/11510/30624

The Cost of The War


By Pascal Riche


Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes plan to present this week a paper estimating the cost of the Iraq War at between $1-2 trillion. This is far higher than earlier estimates of $100-200 billion.Here is their statement:



Jan 05, 2006 -- 11:05:10 AM EST


NEW STUDY SUGGESTS ECONOMIC COST OF IRAQ WAR MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY RECOGNIZED



A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.



The study expands on traditional budgetary estimates by including costs such as lifetime disability and health care for the over16,000 injured, one fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. It then goes on to analyze the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and the impact of factors such as higher oil prices that can be partly attributed to the conflict in Iraq. The paper also calculates the impact on the economy if a proportion of the money spent on the Iraq war were spent in other ways, including on investments in the United States



“Shortly before the war, when Administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, Administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers,” points out Professor Stiglitz. “But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey’s numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs.”



The Allied Social Sciences Association meeting is attended by the nation’s leading economists and social scientists. It is sponsored jointly by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security.

[mom cat]

1. This war will be the downfall of America as we knew it.

[iam]

30. Only

American conservatism can destroy America

[NashVegas]

2. Feudal Bastards - Let 'Em Hire All the Mercs They Want

Let Exxon/Mobile recruit their own freaking army.
Let Coca-Cola do the same.
Haliburton
Bechtel

and whomever else wants a contract in the new colony. Let THEM recruit, train, ship, clothe, pay, equip, and take over their medical care.

[rodeodance]

3. needs to be on front page upper fold of every newspaper!!!!!!

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Bush took a $5 Trillion surplus ...

... and turned it into a $2 Trillion deficit.

And he's not done yet.

Clinton left us the strongest, most robust economy we had ever known, and within a year, it was in ruins. Since then, it's been struggling along.

It wasn't just the war. Or just 9-11. Or just the tax cuts for the rich. Or mismanagement of the treasury. It was all those things, as well as the growing realization that as long as Bush remains at the wheel of the Ship of State, America is a bad investment.

The next three years will be the worst yet.

--p!

[saigon68]

5. Its fucking outrageous

Lucky there are no seniors who need drugs for their pain

and

Lucky there are no children to educate

and

Lucky there are no hungry people to feed.


</sarcasm>

[cliss]

6. Well, now I'm curious -

how long do they estimate that we will be Iraq? They have to be using some kind of assumptions; like we'll be there 3 years, 5 years, 15 years, 50 years....

The article doesn't say. But, as usual, you always get the REAL truth from other sources. Just ignore the Washington propaganda machine. Go to studies, or scholarly articles, and you'll get more of the truth.

Either way, this will destroy our country, like the poster above says. I agree.

[Seansky]

7. and to think that money could have greatly reduced world hunger and instea

instead increased it...hard to even think about it.

[DemoTex]

8. Looting the treasury and bankrupting the country is treason.

Period. Start building the gallows. Today. I am anti-death penalty except for true treason. Fuck with my country and I'll support hanging or firing squad. I'm as serious as a heart attack.

Mac

[donkeyotay]

27. It is treason

These private companies with their private government took the wealth of the nation and spent it on their private ambitions.

Halliburton and the rest of the GOP-military elite made billions. People on food stamps, people expecting social security are expected to pay for it. One group, with their fat offshore accounts benefits, and another group, the increasing third-world America, pays for it. You and your children.

They have betrayed the people of the United States, the people their office is supposed to represent.

[allemand]

9. Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion says Nobel prize-winning economist

Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist

· Economists say official estimates are far too low
· New calculation takes in dead and injured soldiers

Jamie Wilson in Washington
Saturday January 7, 2006
The Guardian

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.
(...)

Mr Stiglitz told the Guardian that despite the staggering costs laid out in their paper the economists had erred on the side of caution. "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK." In 2003, as US and British troops were massing on the Iraq border, Larry Lindsey, George Bush's economic adviser, suggested the costs might reach $200bn. The White House said the figure was far too high, and the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said Iraq could finance its own reconstruction. (...)

Congress has appropriated $251bn for military operations, and the Congressional budget office has now estimated that under one plausible scenario the Iraq war will cost over $230bn more in the next 10 years. According to Mr Stiglitz and Ms Bilmes, whose paper is due to be presented to the Allied Social Sciences Association in Boston tomorrow, there are substantial future costs not included in the Congressional calculations.

For instance, the latest Pentagon figures show that more than 16,000 military personnel have been wounded in Iraq. Due to improvements in body armour, there has been an unusually high number of soldiers who have survived major wounds such as brain damage, spinal injuries and amputations. The economists predict the cost of lifetime care for the thousands of troops who have suffered brain injuries alone could run to $35bn. Taking in increased defence spending as a result of the war, veterans' disability payments and demobilisation costs, the economists predict the budgetary costs of the war alone could approach $1 trillion.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1681078,00.html

[ckramer]

10. Every Republican or Democrat supporting this war is an idiot

What were they thinking, really? It doesn't make any sense.

[ckramer]

11. Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economis

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

link

[phusion]

12. And what did WW2 cost us in today's dollars?

$2 trillion.

Thieving bastards.

[wookie294]

18. $2.9 trillion

In today's dollars, World War II cost $2.9 trillion. Economist Warwick McKibbin, a board member of the Australian central bank, said a conflict lasting to 2010 could cost more than $3.5 trillion.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0128-33.htm

"In Vietnam, the last sustained war the nation fought, the United States spent $111 billion during the eight years of the war, from 1964 to 1972. Adjusted for inflation, that's more than $494 billion, an average of $61.8 billion per year, or $5.15 billion per month."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-09-07-cover-costs_x.htm

"Osama (bin Laden) doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death," said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. "He's well on his way to doing it."

In September 2002, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, estimated that the war would cost $1.5 billion to $4 billion per month. In fact, it costs between $5 billion and $8 billion per month.

The Pentagon says the "burn rate" -- the operating costs of the wars -- has averaged $5.6 billion per month in the current fiscal year, but that does not include some costs for maintenance and replacement of equipment and some training and reconstruction costs, experts say.

According to an analysis by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee, from the beginning of the war in March, 2003, through the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the Bush administration has received a total of $314 billion in special appropriations for the wars.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/07/17/IRAQCOST.TMP

[ahimsa]

19. Meme alert

"Osama (bin Laden) doesn't have to win; he will just bleed us to death," said Michael Scheuer, a former counterterrorism official at the CIA who led the pursuit of bin Laden and recently retired after writing two books critical of the Clinton and Bush administrations. "He's well on his way to doing it."

I think we need to see the numbers on how much we are spending on Osama rather than the numbers we're spending on Iraq to jump to that conclusion.
:think:

[wookie294]

21. I think Scheuer was referring to Iraq

Without Osama (and 9/11), the USA would not have invaded Iraq. Osama's purpose on 9/11 was not to win a war in Afghanistan or the USA. The purpose was to scare the hell out of the American people so that they would do something irrational and expensive. Osama succeeded on March 18, 2003. Bush fell into his trap.

[Oversea Visitor]

20. Haha

What has OBL got to do with Iraq.
You bleeding yourself to death by a self inflicted wound.

You president is a nutcase. He invited himself into Iraq. This problems is self inflicted by a walking disaster.

[JusticeForAll]

22. But first it has to be a "problem" to the nutcase

ALl of his cronies are profitting, while the US citizens bleed $$$. From his eyes, where's the problem?

[Oversea Visitor]

23. When the economy collapse

It is coming.
Of course they spin like hell. But you can not hide from it hey.

[donkeyotay]

28. The self-inflicted wound of letting businessmen run warfare

Neocon philosophers like Rummy suggest they are informed by Sun Tzu, so I've been doing some reading to see if he was as stupid a son-of-a-bitch as one of them, and - surprise - he wasn't. He said a lot of other stuff besides "be sneaky and lie." (which he didn't really say either). Here's a sample:

Sun Tzu - "Those skilled in war cultivate the Tao and preserve the laws and are therefore able to formulate victorious policies."

And Tu Mu's commentary on it: "The Tao is the way of humanity and justice; 'laws' are regulations and institutions. Those who excel in war first cultivate their own humanity and justice and maintain their laws and institutions. By these means they make their governments invincible."

[u4ic]

13. Mindboggling

To think what our world would be like if that money was used for humanitarian purposes.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. It's hard to skim (not impossible but hard) from humanitarian

efforts.... it was easy to skim in Iraq, Hallibacon and KBR proved this out nicely.

[Oversea Visitor]

15. That is very conservative

There is the rebuilding
You break it you better repair it and not with guns and bombs that not going to work.

It is a mess
Do it right the World will help foot some of the bills
Do it wrong we turn our back on it and force the whole bill on the US.

Money you can earn and repay
Credibility you must earn it again
I do not see how the US can walk away from the compensation and repair bills in Iraq.
If you do then US WILL NEVER be trusted again. You cant survive in this world alone.

[Deja Q]

16. Our government officials want to destroy government. What better way than

to bankrupt it?

China and S. Arabia will be in for a shock if they haven't listened to Grover Nyquist, *, and the rest of the 'cons who ahve openly talked about whittling the government (Grover's comments being quite memorable) and haven't inferred this already...

[donkeyotay]

29. He wanted to destroy public government and replace it with private

rule by the deserving, the chosen, the few, the rich. Ah, the good old days. After all, society must be governed by someone or something. They just don't believe in democracy. They say it's mob rule and that people are incapable of self-governance. Therefore, they must be ruled by a Republican elite who know what's best for us.

[savemefromdumbya]

17. www.costofwar.com

here

http://www.costofwar.com

[lovuian]

24. Study says Iraq war could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion

This topic has been moved by the moderator of this forum.
It can be found at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x79355

[leesa]

25. It ain't cheap trying to force The Rapture! I'll bet God will have a good.

laugh watching our economic collapse as penance for trying to trump him.

[Barkley]

26. Iraq's pre war GDP was only $27 billion. We could have paid each Iraqi

per capita income for more than 30 years.

How can we afford to 'privatize' social security now?

This can only mean one thing: More tax cuts!