Bush's Con Jobs: Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out?-Paul Craig Roberts

[Clara T]

Bush's Con Jobs

Will the US Need an IMF Bail Out?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes have calculated the cost to Americans of Bush's Iraq war to be between one and two trillion dollars. This figure is 5 to 10 times higher than the $200 billion that Bush's economic adviser, Larry Lindsey, estimated. Lindsey was fired by Bush, because Lindsey's estimate was three times higher than the $70 billion figure that the Bush administration used to mislead Congress and the American voters about the burden of the war. You can't work in the Bush administration unless you are willing to lie for dub-ya.

Americans need to ask themselves if the White House is in competent hands when a $70 billion war becomes a $2 trillion war. Bush sold his war by understating its cost by a factor of 28.57. Any financial officer any where in the world whose project was 2,857 percent over budget would instantly be fired for utter incompetence.

Bush's war cost almost 30 times more than he said it would because the moronic neoconservatives that he stupidly appointed to policy positions told him the invasion would be a cakewalk. Neocons promised minimal US casualties. Iraq already has cost 2,200 dead Americans and 16,000 seriously wounded--and Bush's war is not over yet. The cost of lifetime care and disability payments for the thousands of US troops who have suffered brain and spinal damage was not part of the unrealistic rosy picture that Bush painted.
Dr. Stiglitz's $2 trillion estimate is OK as far as it goes. But it doesn't go far enough. My own estimate is a multiple of Stiglitz's.

Stiglitz correctly includes the cost of lifetime care of the wounded, the economic value of destroyed and lost lives, and the opportunity cost of the resources diverted to war destruction. What he leaves out is the war's diversion of the nation's attention away from the ongoing erosion of the US economy. War and the accompanying domestic police state have filled the attention span of Americans and their government. Meanwhile, the US economy has been rapidly deteriorating into third world status.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts01102006.html

[FloridaPat]

1. Perhaps * will be known as the most incompetent person to ever

live. Maybe that's the history he's going after. He's got a great start.

[Clara T]

2. I was thinking about this the other day

As we know Bush was a 'C' student in college. Now I'm not going to disparage people who don't make good grades, but what I was thinking was that in the Ivy League and elsewhere there are elaborate networks within fraternities to fix grades in numerous ways such as copying other peoples tests, getting old tests from brothers, having 'social affiliates' do your work for you and so on.

Bush was a connected cokehead in college and I'm going to wager he cheated his ass off just to barely skate by and in fact was closer to a flunked out student in reality had he not benefited from various methods of cheating and rigging.

Pure speculation.

[FloridaPat]

5. I bet you're right. Never thought about his school years.

He hasn't done anything right except get the right friends to bail him out at the right time. Yes, I can see that being done in school too.

[Erika]

3. We are sliding rapidly into a third world country status

Our good paying jobs have been shipped out, we have health care only the upper crust can afford, and our infrastructure is crumbling as our taxes go to our imperialistic government for military purposes.

Unless we get rid of the Republicans, the great days of this country are over.

[ixion]

4. Mr. Roberts is a credit to principled conservatives

He consistently calls it as it is, rather than toting the party line.

:applause: