B.S. about the cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

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Published on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Lying about the Ruinous Cost of the War in Iraq
by Huck Gutman

While Congress was in session this week debating such momentous issues as whether to prevent the courts from interfering with the Pledge of Allegiance and whether to make it illegal to use women’s bodies to raise stem cells (in point of fact, all stem cells are taken from in vitro fertilization), a remarkable report came out in a minor government committee, a report on the cost of the US "global war on terrorism." What is particulary revealing in the report is its provision of very specific numbers for the cost, in dollars, of the Iraq War.

As almost everyone knows, unless they have very faulty memories, the initial estimates of the Bush administration were that the war in Iraq would not cost American taxpayers much

In a fateful September 2002 interview with the Wall Street Journal while the Bush administration was planning the Iraq war, the President’s economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey proposed an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion for its cost. The numbers were too high for the President’s liking, so he did what all irresponsible people do: He fired the messenger. Mr. Lindsey was gone.

In damage control mode, Mitch Daniels, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, spun the Lindsay estimate by saying that it was “very, very high.” Note that it was not just high, or very high – but very, very high.

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld got into the spin circus, saying, “the Office of Management and Budget, has come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost.” If you don’t like the numbers, you can not only fire the statistician, you can hire another one to give you the numbers you want to hear. As Mark Twain once said, “Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.”

But facts are facts. The cost is far higher than "under $50 billion," far higher than even the high end of Mr. Lindsay's estimate. As Ms. Belasco has revealed, the cost of the Iraq war through fiscal 2006 is $319 billion.

In addition to this, she notes that both CRS and the General Accounting Office have found that the Defense Department, in reporting on the costs of the war, has omitted substantial amounts of war spending. So the figure is likely to be higher, and it will of course keep growing as the tragic occupation continues.

And will grow still higher as we care for our wounded veterans, and as we re-supply a military which has used up many of its material resources.

Thus, it was not only about weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration misled the country. The enormous fiscal cost of the President’s misadventure in Iraq means that there is a lot less federal money to address the crisis in health care, the lack of affordability of college for young people, and the need to find alternatives to fossil fuel.

The Bush administration knew this would happen, of course -- the war in Iraq is, among other things, a way for neoconservatives to insure that the federal government fails in its mission to “promote the general Welfare,” a mission mandated by the U.S. Constitution. . We will have a government less able to serve the needs of its people not because we want that kind of government, but because so much of our financial resources will have been poured into the sands of Iraq. Between tax breaks for the wealthy and the costs of the war, President Bush is bankrupting the American treasury.

The rest of the article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0719-24.htm