$2 trillion to remove Saddam Hussein says Nobel prize-winning economist

Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist

Saturday January 7, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1681078,00.html

The real cost to the US of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion (£1.1 trillion), up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expanded on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concluded that the US government is continuing to underestimate the cost of the war.

>>>>Mr Stiglitz, a Columbia University professor who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2001, told the Guardian that despite the staggering costs laid out in their paper the economists had erred on the side of caution. "Our estimates are very conservative, and it could be that the final costs will be much higher. And it should be noted they do not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or the UK." In 2003, as US and British troops were massing on the Iraq border, Larry Lindsey, George Bush's economic adviser, suggested the costs might reach $200bn. The White House said the figure was far too high, and the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, said Iraq could finance its own reconstruction.

Three years later, with more than 140,000 US soldiers on the ground in Iraq, even the $200bn figure was very low, according to the two economists.


This figure is nothing to the privledged cowboy in the White House who's had everything handed to him. It's not his money. Why should he care? Same with Congress who gave it all up to him. They get to vote for their own salaries and raises. They get to provide each other healthcare.They get thir income supplemented by lobbyists. Why should they care?

Because we will demand they care this November, or get out.

After all, it's my money they're spending.

Yours, too.

Too bad when they foreclose and we have to pay them with Texas, Alabama, Utah and Wyoming....as partial payment.

from Defense Department financial systems and that was from 2002/2003. How much is "missing" now I wonder? How much has gone "missing" to contractors, pay offs, mercenaries, etc in Iraq? These are costs that are not always counted towards official costs and budgets.

Links and more info in an old DU thread (from Dec-31-05) here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=4682

Of course to many of us the "cost" that matters most of all is not the money but the lives... of our soldiers, of our allies soldiers, of the people who are there to help, and of course all of the innocent Iraqi men, women and children killed and maimed for life because Bush's LIES and the War for Oil and Bush's revenge.