Iraq Costs US $12 Billion Per Month

U

Uli

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(March 10) -- The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion - or more - by 2017.

Iraq war costs


Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $816 billion to that bottom line, they say.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has done its own projections and comes in lower, forecasting a cumulative cost by 2017 of $1.2 trillion to $1.7 trillion for the two wars, with Iraq generally accounting for three-quarters of the costs.

Variations in such estimates stem from the sliding scales of assumptions, scenarios and budget items that are counted. But whatever the estimate, the cost will be huge, the auditors of the Government Accountability Office say.

In a Jan. 30 report to Congress, the GAO observed that the U.S. will be committing "significant" future resources to the wars, "requiring decision makers to consider difficult trade-offs as the nation faces an increasing long-range fiscal challenge."

These numbers don't include the war's cost to the rest of the world. In Iraq itself, the 2003 U.S.-led invasion - with its devastating air bombardments - and the looting and arson that followed, severely damaged electricity and other utilities, the oil industry, countless factories, hospitals, schools and other underpinnings of an economy.

No one has tried to calculate the economic damage done to Iraq, said spokesman Niels Buenemann of the International Monetary Fund, which closely tracks national economies. But millions of Iraqis have been left without jobs, and hundreds of thousands of professionals, managers and other middle-class citizens have fled the country.

In their book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," Stiglitz, of Columbia University, and Bilmes, of Harvard, report the two wars will have cost the U.S. budget $845 billion in 2007 dollars by next Sept. 30, end of fiscal year 2008, assuming Congress fully funds Bush administration requests. That counts not just military operations, but embassy costs, reconstruction and other war-related expenses.

That total far surpasses the $670 billion in 2007 dollars the Congressional Research Service says was the U.S. price tag for the 12-year Vietnam War.

Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 percent higher than 2004's, the CBO reports.

The reasons are numerous: the "surge" of additional U.S. units into Iraq; rising fuel costs; fattened bonuses to attract re-enlistments; and particularly the need to "reset," that is, repair or replace worn-out, destroyed or damaged military equipment. Almost $17 billion is appropriated this year for advanced armored vehicles to protect troops against roadside bombs.

Looking ahead, both the CBO and Stiglitz-Bilmes construct two scenarios, one in which U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan drop sharply and early - to 30,000 by late 2009 for the CBO, and to 55,000 by 2012 for Stiglitz-Bilmes - and a second in which the drawdown is more gradual.

Significantly, the two studies view different time frames, the CBO calculating possible costs met in the next 10 years, while Stiglitz and Bilmes also include costs incurred during that period but paid for later, such as equipment replaced in post-2017 budgets.

This factor figures most in the category of veterans' medical care and disability payments, where the CBO foresees $9 billion to $13 billion in costs by 2017. Stiglitz and Bilmes, meanwhile, project $422 billion to $717 billion in costs over the lifetime of soldiers who by 2017 are wounded or otherwise mentally or physically disabled by the wars.

"The CBO is only looking 10 years out on everything," Bilmes noted in an interview.

For its part, a CBO critique suggested that Bilmes and Stiglitz might be overstating the expense of treating veterans' brain injuries, a costly category.

The two economists say their calculations are conservative, because they don't encompass many "hidden" items in the U.S. budget. Their basic projections also exclude the potentially huge debt-service cost - on which CBO approximately agrees - and the cost to the U.S. economy of global oil prices that have quadrupled since 2003, an increase analysts blame partly on the Iraq upheaval.

Estimating all economic and social costs might push the U.S. war bill up toward $5 trillion by 2017, they say.

Their book already figures in the stay-or-leave debate over Iraq.

When Stiglitz testified on Feb. 28 before the congressional Joint Economic Committee, the ranking Republican, New Jersey's Rep. Jim Saxton, complained that such projections are too imprecise to help determine relative costs and benefits of the Iraq war.

Saxton said a rapid U.S. pullout could lead to full-scale civil war and Iranian domination of Iraq, "enormous costs" that he said should be weighed in any calculation.
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As long as it gains us a victory/stability *even though I'm suspicious that all the money doesn't go straight to the troops but to other sources, whhich is why I'd actually like to see this war ran by someone like Obama/McCain who doesn't have business ties and can put the money to use.* I could be less concerned.
 
well,hold on, taking care of all of the ilegal imagrants and free care in this country costs us over 10 times that of the war in Iraq, so don't be blaming the military.:notrust
 
Enough money to improve the school system, the health care system, etc. :zaru
 
Zaru said:
Enough money to improve the school system, the health care system, etc. :zaru
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Hm, if this was solely the government's funds on basic expenditure for the war, then maybe I'd agree with the comparison. But the fact is that war generates profits for arms-manufacturers. Apart from book publishers and pharmacies I don't think the same amount of wealth could be generated for those two alternate programs of expenditure.

Sadly that reflects also how much of an industry the arms manufacturer industry is too. Plus payrolls for soldiers versus that of schoolteachers = :zaru

The funny thing is that with such a depletion of wealth, it is unlikely that a minimal government party like the Republicans will gain much respect. People might assume that the country would be better off with a larger government which seized whatever assets it required to get the country out of this mess.

Going into a recession however won't necessarily make that a good choice. Unless of course the Democrats are careful with their expenditure in their potential future term as the presidential party.
 
$12 billion huh? Oh well, it could be worse since the dollar isn't actually worth anything anymore nowadays... :p

Seriously, check out our new 3 dollar coins!

 
Toby_Christ said:
The funny thing is that with such a depletion of wealth, it is unlikely that a minimal government party like the Republicans will gain much respect. People might assume that the country would be better off with a larger government which seized whatever assets it required to get the country out of this mess.
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Sad thing is, the GOP didn't do much to decrease Gov't involvement at all. They only increased it. *sigh*
Government will one day wipe my ass for me. And then I'll cry, I'll cry.
 
This deserves a serious facepalm.

$12 billion dollars?

Imagine what other things the country can spend it on; helping hunger, disease, and the like. Honestly... It's like that chocolate house people made earlier somewhere in Canada while poor African children are starving.

:apathy
 
its kinda outdated to say the iraq war sucks by now. especially since the surge is working and mccain says we are beating the enemy
 
Meanwhile we still don't have an infrastructure worth a damn and inflation out the ass.
 
Anyway the oil stolen to Iraq (#2 world ressource) will eventually make up for it, you really think they did target Iraq for any other reason than oil? :huh The oil will get more and more rare in the next decades, and more and more expensive. Taking the control of world #2 oil ressource will greatly support US economy.

US economy will not suffer from that war, those who really suffered and will suffer are all the people killed, injured by that war and their relatives.
 
well j man if anything record high oil price kinda disproves the whole "blood for oil" theory to begin with, since you'd think if the USA was benefitting so much it wouldnt be in a recession right now
 
UN should take over Iraq ASAP.. just check how much the US debt increased cuz of Iraq war

Moegi FC
 
AbnormallyNormal said:
well j man if anything record high oil price kinda disproves the whole "blood for oil" theory to begin with, since you'd think if the USA was benefitting so much it wouldnt be in a recession right now
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Of course US economy is not benefiting right now from iraq war, the benefits are expected for the next decades. US will rebuild iraq (that they destroyed) in exchange for oil, I call that thievery. That's why Bush is decided to stay in iraq, he fears that if he leaves now, the current iraq puppet gov will be to weak to fight the rebels and will be overthrown eventually and all the war would be for nothing, because US won't get the oil.
 
Yeah well, we happy crappy design agencies...

In one of it's more idiotic actions our goverment payed 60.000 euro's to such an agency to design a new logo for the goverment. They simply inverted the existing logo and cashed in on the money...



Left is the old logo, on the right is the new one...
 
Shinobi Mugen said:
$12 billion huh? Oh well, it could be worse since the dollar isn't actually worth anything anymore nowadays... :p

Seriously, check out our new 3 dollar coins!

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Little known fact: The US has had a $3 coin.



They were made from 1854-1889.

And hell, I'm not a Eurofag and I even have Euros.



Someone send me moar. From a numismatic point of view, I like them.
 
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And let's not forget that McCain wants this expense to continue for the next 100 years and while we're doing that it's time to 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'. What exactly was that group we were supposed to be after? I think it started with the letter A......

This is just sick and Toby no this won't help the GOP because the GOP started this war.
 
The J-Man said:
Of course US economy is not benefiting right now from iraq war, the benefits are expected for the next decades. US will rebuild iraq (that they destroyed) in exchange for oil, I call that thievery. That's why Bush is decided to stay in iraq, he fears that if he leaves now, the current iraq puppet gov will be to weak to fight the rebels and will be overthrown eventually and all the war would be for nothing, because US won't get the oil.
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if i am not mistaken the total worth of the Iraqi oil is 100billion dollars.. this is not the reason for the invasion.. its about energy control
 
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