The Cost of Not Liberating Iraq

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Really?

Given the extent and depth of the lies told the public about Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran, how can anyone figure out just exactly what the costs are. I am certain that opportunity costs and spawning of massive externalities (piff, piff, what a crippled bet or 50,000?), not to mention massive corruption and simply put crime at the highest levels make your exercise moot, if not plain stupid.

Oh, and I suggest also that the $500B (that the administration will admit to) for the DOD is not in the figures for your calculations, neither is the total rebuild of the

US Army which has been effectively destroyed for the purposes it was designed, which aint what it is doing now. The fact that soldiers are "volunteers with contracts is no reason to treat them and their familes like curs, dogs with repetitive 15 month tours and 12 month rest in the US. Oh, well they aint the kids of you

bloody Wall Street pukes - if your kids were at risk, you would be in the streets!

The point is that this president started a "Wag the Dog War" with no thought other than winning the elections in 2002 and 2004 as well as settling some asinine, adolescent scores with his father and who knows who else. That is why there was no logistics tail to sustain the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They purposefully did not spend much on Afghanistan, preferring to let the warlords,

fuelled by the largest spike in heroin in the world perform the pacficification.

I never thought I would live to see the egregiously bad behaviour on the part of citizens, politicians, military and especially "budiness" types with degrees from high priced schools, but now is common, rampant, "screw you I got mine"; social and economic Darwinism to the nth power. And Kudlow, what a joke, and a jerk.

Go back to whatever last you made shoes on in the streets of Calcutta.

William A. Franklin of NC @ Apr 09, 2008 16:19:37 PM

Ridicoulus

The number throwing of this article is so unsientific, so erratic, so one-sided and propagandistic its hard to believe that any serious magazine would print a milk-girl calculation like that.

With the figures included in this calculation, and more important, all the figures excluded, you could postulate that invading almost every country on world's surface may be a "profit business".

But the math is wrong, far off scale wrong, to be precise and this even if you not even take in the consideration that in all the dollar-calculation the hundreds of thousands of lifes lost during the process are not mentioned at all.

Its not only disgusting economical blabla, amoral in every word, its even plain wrong blabla.

Fairfis @ Apr 09, 2008 16:12:34 PM

Cost of Iraq War

James,

As a reservist involuntarily recalled back onto active duty and headed for Iraq, do you mind answering an alternative question?

When will liberating Iraq become too expensive? And can that decision even be quantified in terms of dollars or injuries and fatalities?

Should America be ready to accept another 40,000 injuries/deaths of its service men and women in order to attain a goal that we can't define or quantify?

The families of our fallen comrades understandably and deservedly want to feel that their sacrifice was worth something, but at what price can that sense of purpose be reached? Is it worth another 2,000 lives to add meaning to the sacrifices of our lost heroes? Is it worth 5,000? 20,000?

0.8% of our nation's population is in the military and an even small percentage is actually deployed in theater to fight this war, thus the "costs" of this war are being paid by a very small fraction of our country's citizens.

How long should we ask them and their families to bear this burden?

Joe Pilot of NY @ Apr 09, 2008 16:12:16 PM

Cost of Iraq War

Just want to make a point -- not about the Iraq war -- but rather about the math and GDP. For example, if the amount we've spent is $500 billion, it's important to remember that was spent over five years. Total GDP for that period has been north of $60 trillion ($12T x 5 years). Therefore, spending on Iraq would have comprised less than 1% of GDP for that period.

www.fundmasteryblog.com

Kurt Brouwer of CA @ Apr 09, 2008 15:21:48 PM

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