<where does the $20 billion figure come from? The $75 billion was the only figure I recall from W, and he kept that under wraps until the war started.>
I guess the idea is, the Pentagon will say, "We didn't use all the money appropriated, so we'll just give it back without spending it, because we're so worried about the size of the Federal debt."
Right. Of course, that's the reasonable thing to expect, since they have a track record of doing this. Almost as good as their track record of bringing freedom and democracy to Kuwait and Afghanistan and......
OK, enough jokes.
As I recall, the 75B$ was just for the direct costs of the war, just for this year, and did not include any funds for post-war (pacification, setting up colonial administration, etc. for the next few years). Next year, they'll come back for more.
The 75B$ also did not include all the secondary and tertiary costs borne by the taxpayers for our ongoing WarOnAnyoneWhoTalksBack. A partial list of this includes:
1. Homeland Security
2. the first, and second, and any subsequent bailouts of airlines.
3. the unfinished war in Afghanistan
4. bribes, to the Israelis, Egyptians. Also Turks (I can't figure out why they get anything, since they didn't give anything).
5. increased military activities in the nearly-100 other nations our troops and CIA are operating in, from Columbia to the Phillipines to Morocco.
10 billion here, 10 billion there, pretty soon it starts to add up to real money....... |
