Cost of Bush's wars to hit or exceed 6 trillion, or $75k per US household
Offline the working paper by Professor Linda J. Bilmes makes clear that the true legacy the two conflicts – which have cost $2 trillion in actual outlays so far – have not yet even begun to be appreciated.
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"More than half of the 1.56 million troops who have been discharged to date have received medical treatment at VA [Dept of Veteran Affairs] facilities and been granted benefits for the rest of their lives," the report said, adding that the real bills will be incurred for decades to come.
"The peak year for paying disability compensation to World War I veterans was in 1969 – more than 50 years after Armistice. The largest expenditures for World War II veterans were in the late 1980s. Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing," it said.
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The decision to finance the war through borrowing has already added $2 trillion to the US national debt – or about 20 per cent of the total national debt added between 2001 and 2012.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
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The estimates dwarf the initial projections of the war costs. In 2002 Lawrence Lindsey, then President Bush's chief economic adviser, estimated that the "upper-bound" costs of war against Iraq would be $200 billion, but added that the "successful prosecution" of the war would be good for the economy.
That notion is severely challenged by the report which warns that cost of the wars is already affecting investment in education, infrastructure and scientific research, and that a large proportion of the money spent did not help to grow the wider US economy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9961877/Cost-to-US-of-Iraq-and-Afghan-wars-could-hit-6-trillion.html
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Imagine that, blowing up government money doesn't improve the economy.... who would have thunk. Our government is insane and are operating on economic theories that have been proven to be catastrophic. Yet, we still have "experts" who think that simply having the government borrow and spend money is the secret to economic stability. It isn't fucking complicated, you have to spend less than you bring in over the long term, deficits don't magically disappear and a large established economy will grow slower than economies that are up and coming experiencing technology for the first time.
The least we could have done is steal some of Iraq's oil.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
You know that they put a pipe in to the reserves and are sucking it dry as we discuss this subject? The difference is that the American people won't get a benefit from it.
Maybe that was Osama's plan all along was not to win militarily, but to bankrupt the USA.
If that was his plan he probably should have just rented a cabana in the caribbean and just watched. Same result minus the introduction to SEAL team 6.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
if there had been no 9/11, i guarantee you bush still would have gone to war with iraq. it might have taken a bit longer to manufacture an excuse, and the war itself might have been longer (the climate of fear made "sock and awe" easily justifiable; without 9/11, we probably would have had to take a more gradual approach, and thus more lives would have been lost), but it would have happened nonetheless. i think even clinton would have liked to have done it, but he was smart enough to run out his second term peacefully and let that dumb chicken-hawk do it and take all the flak, while he came out looking like the good guy in terms of foreign policy.
"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson