>>" Obviously not, since Iraq was THREE trillion. "<<
According to Joseph Stiglitz we will be fortunate if it stays under that number...Read his book but then that would not be "easy" for you, would it? Better and much easier for you to read the latest Palin "Dick and Jane See Spot" book with the rest of your conservative "intellectuals".
>>" Starred Review. Readers may be surprised to learn just how difficult it was for Nobel Prize-winning economist Stiglitz and Kennedy School of Government professor Bilmes to dig up the actual and projected costs of the Iraq War for this thorough piece of accounting. Using "emergency" funds to pay for most of the war, the authors show that the White House has kept even Congress and the Comptroller General from getting a clear idea on the war's true costs. Other expenses are simply overlooked, one of the largest of which is the $600 billion going toward current and future health care for veterans. These numbers reveal stark truths: improvements in battlefield medicine have prevented many deaths, but seven soldiers are injured for every one that dies (in WWII, this ratio was 1.6 to one). Figuring in macroeconomic costs and interest-the war has been funded with much borrowed money-the cost rises to $4.5 trillion; add Afghanistan, and the bill tops $7 trillion. This shocking expose, capped with 18 proposals for reform, is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the war was financed, as well as what it means for troops on the ground and the nation's future. "<<
Saw a recent PBS report on brain injured vets coming back from IED blasts...estimated $3Mn lifetime cost for medical care of each of these unfortunately all too common lifetime maimed survivors...And just so someone could get his family revenge...
Read this recent AP news article...
>>" Last Updated: May 09. 2011 8:47AM
Health care for military reaches $53 billion
Donna Cassata/ Associated Press
Washington— A military built for fighting wars is looking more and more like a health care entitlement program.
Costs of the program that provides health coverage to some 10 million active duty personnel, retirees, reservists and their families have jumped from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion in the Pentagon's latest budget request.
Desperate to cut spending in Washington's time of fiscal austerity, President Barack Obama has proposed increasing the fees for working-age retirees in the decades-old health program, known as TRICARE.
After years of resisting proposed increases for the military men and women who sacrificed for a nation, budget-conscious lawmakers suddenly are poised to make them pay a bit more for their health care.
The current fees, unchanged in 11 years, are $230 a year for an individual and $460 for a family. That's far less than what civilian federal workers pay for health care, about $5,000 a year, and what most other people in the U.S. pay.
Obama is seeking a fee increase of $2.50 per month for an individual and $5 per month for families, which approaches the current price of a gallon of gasoline. Future increases starting in 2013 would be pegged to rising costs as measured by the national health care expenditure index produced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which projects 6.2 percent growth.
The explosive expense of health care rivals what the Pentagon shells out to buy fighter aircraft, submarines and high-tech weapons, and is about half of the $118 billion that the Obama administration wants in the next budget to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "<<
Just another "small" anecdote on how we have been crazily spending since we started this "War on Terrorism", this from Afghanistan...
Near the end of the Bush Fiasco (I am being kind using the word "Fiasco" for his 8 years") from Jone's 2008 "GraveYard of Empires" book...
We budgeted $8.6 Bn to create an Afghan National Police Force. Yup $8.6 Bn to train an illiterate, tribal society to be a modern, non corrupt policemen in a culture where one of the big sports is to cut off the head of a sheep put it in a bag and hit it from horseback to win the ANHS title...yup, the Afghanistan National Hit the Sheep title. And btw, the police trainers cannot even speak the language of the trainees. Who the hell knows how much has been spent on that idiocy and how much those Socialists, Blackwater et al, have sponged off that one.
And oh yeah...just a reminder...Andrew Natsios, Bush's Head of the Agency for International Development in March 2003 said the total cost to American Taxpayers for Iraq Reconstruction would be $1.7 Bn... |
