Iraq war will cost each U.S. family $3,400

[rawstory]

Seen first in the U.S. on the liberal alternative to Drudge, http://www.rawstory.com

Iraq war 'will cost each US family $3,400'

Julian Borger in Washington
Friday June 25, 2004
The Guardian

The United States has spent more than $126bn on the war in Iraq, which will ultimately cost every American family an estimated $3,400, according to a new report by two thinktanks.

The report, published yesterday by the leftwing Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus also counts the human costs.

As of June 16, before yesterday's nationwide attacks, up to 11,317 Iraqi civilians and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers or insurgents had been killed, according to the report, which is titled Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War.

The death toll among coalition troops was 952 by the same date, of which 853 were American. The overwhelming majority, 694, were killed after George Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1 last year. Between 50 and 90 civilian contractors and missionaries and 30 international journalists have also been killed, the report says.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1246876,00.html

[name not needed]

1. I want my money back

now.

[GoBlue]

2. Correct me if I'm wrong but $126Bn divided by $3400/family

= 37,058,823.5 families. Which seems way short for a country of ~300 million.

[BeyondGeography]

5. The key word is "ultimately"

Then again, the article doesn't spell out what it means by "ultimately." I'm afraid it's one of those "where's the beef" deals. The Guardian usually doesn't let gaps like that past the editor's desk.

[lapfog_1]

7. There are about 100 million

taxpayers, including corporations, but I think your right, the
number of "families" is larger than what was used to calculate
this number. Of course, the war is going to cost a *lot* more
than $126 B too.

I'm guessing that the $3,000+ per family won't be far off.

[LiberalFighter]

9. 2000 Census

105,480,101 Households

[stickdog]

20. It's already 186 billion and counting ...

[lapfog_1]

3. Look at it the other way!

it's about $25,000 for each and every Iraqi family!

I suspect that if we just printed a bunch of checks for $25,000
and offered it to every head of household in Iraq (but only if they
would all leave for a month to go on "vacation"), we could have
arrested Saddam and his sons, and never fired a shot.

Just an idea.

[Spinzonner]

4. Bill my share to Halliburton

[happynewyear]

6. enough to cover all Americans with health care for 3 years!

and that is just the beginning (I heard this a couple of months ago). Where are we now - 5 years of lost health care coverage for every American? Wouldn't that have been nice!

Makes me sick this whole thing. :puke:

What a waste of time, money, and most of all, human lives!

:dem: :kick:

[JoeRunion]

8. This implies that each family pays taxes equally.

Using "mean" as the measure is misleading.

[struggle4progress]

12. Oh, everybody pays.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
- Eisenhower

[prolesunited]

16. Yes, we all know

that us po' folks have been riding on the backs of the rich for years. They got the tax cuts because the *deserved* them more than all of us hard-working Americans did.

[JoeRunion]

19. A more accurate way of dividing the expense of the war...

is to figure the percentage of each person's tax bill that the war cost..this would be the same percentage; differing amounts. That's the more accurate way to figure it. Coz regardless of what you say, the wealthy pay far more in taxes than the average person.

[struggle4progress]

21. As the rich disproportionately enjoy the advantages ...

... of modern civilisation, and in many cases continue to collect further wealth simply because they have wealth, rather than having to work for it, I consider that they similarly owe a disproportionate debt to the civilization that makes their cozy lives possible, and find myself not terribly sympathetic to piteous cries about their terrible suffering under the tax code. :)

[NJmaverick]

10. That Raw Story web site

Tried to put Spy Ware on my computer. Spybot blocked it though.

[rawstory]

22. We don't use spyware - Not true!

Older spyware programs misinterpret some lines of code -- we've heard of this problem before, and our ad providers have informed us it has to do with old programs not recognizing cookies for ads -- there's no spyware, and I would hope you'd update your program. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we simply don't use any sort of spyware or individual privacy identifiers.

[Sparky McGruff]

11. It's on the installment plan!

Adding in the fact that the war will go on for another 20-30 years, and the extra special money for Halliburton, the health care and lawsuits for depleted uranium exposure, and the lawsuits over the torture in Iraqi prisons... Let's see...

That's only $500 a month per person until the day we die!

[MidwestTransplant]

13. That's about 34X Bush's tax cut

[jeff5]

14. A Damned Fine Argument

for checkboxes on 1040 Forms to indicate what you DON'T want your tax dollars spent for. How many Americans would have volunteered to fund an unprovoked and illegal invasion, given a clear choice??

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. Iraq war will cost each U.S. family $3,400

The United States has spent more than $126bn on the war in Iraq, which will ultimately cost every American family an estimated $3,400, according to a new report by two thinktanks.<<

If each family get's 6 tax breaks.... (not tax advances) they should come out in the black.... then again.. if Halliburton was not comitting fraud to the degree that it is.... it might not cost each family so much... ho hum. Nothing like war profiteering I spose.

www.halliburtonwatch.org

[Gloria]

17. Link to the original report is in the new World Media Watch, just posted..

Foreign Policy in Focus is the site....Jim Lobe, IPS, has written the main story on this.......

[justjones]

18. I'm single...does that mean I'm stuck paying that on my own?

Edited to add: Is that why he's advocating for the po' folks like me to get married so I won't have to foot the bill alone?

[daleo]

23. Either some category of spending has to be "robbed" or taxes must go up

"The report predicted the war will ultimately cost each US household $3,415; its annual costs would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million US citizens who lack medical insurance. Danielle Pletka, an analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, rejected such budget comparisons as intellectually dishonest. "That's not the way budgets work," she said. "I don't think healthcare has been robbed to pay for Iraq.""

It is funny how the laws of addition and subtraction suddenly break down when conservatives discuss war spending.

Also on the subject of how 186$ billion among about 100 million families works out to $3400 per family (rather than about $1860), it is important to keep in mind that this is borrowed money, due to Bush's record budget deficits, so there will be many years of interest paid on this money. It is quite conceivable that this interest alone could account for the difference. Also, money wasted on a foolish war could actually be earning money, which might also be part of the calculation. For example, money spent by government on higher education has been calculated to have quite a high social rate of return (e.g. higher taxes from higher incomes of university graduates), so money diverted from that purpose is not only lost but this rate of return is lost as well. The same would apply for health care, primary education, and infrastructure, perhaps other categories of spending as well.

All that being said, it would be preferable if claims of the sort made in the article were sourced and itemized more fully.

[Norquist Nemesis]

24. $3,400 ...and counting. n/t