Cost of the war in Iraq

[GMDino]

Changing gears from the usual talk because I just read about this.

Actually was lead to it from a Cracked.com article.

This story was linked in that article.  It's three years old but makes the point.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/paying-the-costs-of-iraq-for-decades-to-come/274477/

Quote:A little over 10 years ago, George W. Bush fired his economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for saying that the total cost of invading Iraq might come to as much as $200 billion. Bush instead stood by such advisers as Paul Wolfowitz, who said that the invasion would be largely "self-financing" via Iraq's oil, and Andrew Natsios, who told anincredulous Ted Koppel that the war's total cost to the American taxpayer would be no more than $1.7 billion.

As it turns out, Lawrence Lindsey's estimate was indeed off -- by a factor of 10 or more, on the low side. A new research paper by Linda Bilmes, of the Kennedy School at Harvard, begins this way:

Quote:The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history -- totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion.   

The most powerful and disturbing part of Bilmes's analysis is the explanation of why, even though American combat deaths and military exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming to their ends, covering the costs has just begun. In the introduction she says:

Quote:One of the most significant challenges to future US national security policy will not originate from any external threat. Rather it is simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the paper lays out, a surprisingly large fraction of the long-term costs comes from the disability payments and medical obligations to people who served.
People who were 18 or 20 years old when the war began, and who were injured or disabled (but survived), may need public help until very late in this century. The argument is too detailed to convey fully here, but here is an example:

Quote:The majority of these costly measures - including supplementary pay increases, expansion of TRICARE [military health program] subsidies, upgrades to the VA system and increases in eligibility for veterans benefits - were adopted, at least in part, because the US was facing the first big test of the all-volunteer force (AVF). The AVF depends on pipeline of recruits, and research has shown that the recruiting pool to the AVF is sensitive to economic inducements, including veterans' benefits.

But from a budgetary standpoint, these have been hidden costs of the war, in which cumulatively hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on expanding military health care, pay, recruitment, and service and retirement benefits, without any discussion about how to pay for them. Most of these costs were not covered by war appropriations. And when the topic of pensions is examined in the coming years, it is likely that any reforms that benefit the current generation of veterans will require additional long-term expenditures for the Defense department.

Read it, and reflect on the people who have never been called to account for these and other misjudgments of what launching the invasion would mean.

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Here is a story that came out of the White House in 2002 about their estimates for the cost of the war in Iraq.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/us/threats-responses-cost-white-house-cuts-estimate-cost-war-with-iraq.html

Quote:THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE COST; WHITE HOUSE CUTS ESTIMATE OF COST OF WAR WITH IRAQ

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: December 31, 2002

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30— The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.

In a telephone interview today, the official, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., director of the Office of Management and Budget, also said there was likely to be a deficit in the fiscal 2004 budget, though he declined to specify how large it would be. The administration is scheduled to present its budget to Congress on Feb. 3.

Mr. Daniels would not provide specific costs for either a long or a short military campaign against Saddam Hussein. But he said that the administration was budgeting for both, and that earlier estimates of $100 billion to $200 billion in Iraq war costs by Lawrence B. Lindsey, Mr. Bush's former chief economic adviser, were too high.

Mr. Daniels cautioned that his budget projections did not mean a war with Iraq was imminent, and that it was impossible to know what any military campaign against Iraq would ultimately cost.

''This is nothing more than prudent contingency planning,'' Mr. Daniels said from his home in Indianapolis, where he was reviewing the fiscal 2004 budget at his kitchen table. ''At this point there is no war.''

Mr. Daniels's projections place the cost of an Iraq war in line with that of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, which cost more than $60 billion, or about $80 billion in current dollars. But the United States paid for only a small part of that conflict, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Japan bearing the brunt of the costs.

This time, the gulf nations are less supportive of the United States and, diplomats say, Americans are likely to bear most of the cost of a war with Iraq.
Mr. Daniels declined to explain how budget officials had reached the $50 billion to $60 billion range for war costs, or why it was less in current dollars than the 43-day gulf war in 1991. He also declined to specify how much had been budgeted for munitions and troops.

''All of these are major costs,'' he said.

The driving expense for the military in any war would be the size of the American force and the length of the conflict. In the 1991 war, 550,000 American troops were based in Saudi Arabia, which picked up the cost of virtually all housing, fuel and food.

If President Bush orders an attack against Iraq, the American force would be half the size of that in the 1991 war. The Pentagon's war plans call for deploying as many as 250,000 military personnel, but the initial offensive should start with a much smaller number, with a sizable force in reserve.

The budget director's projections today served as a more politically palatable corrective to figures put forth by Mr. Lindsey in September, when he said that a war with Iraq might amount to 1 percent to 2 percent of the national gross domestic product, or $100 billion to $200 billion. Mr. Lindsey added that as a one-time cost for one year, the expenditure would be ''nothing.''

Mr. Lindsey was criticized inside and outside the administration for putting forth such a large number, which helped pave the way for his ouster earlier this month. He could not be reached for comment this evening. (Congressional Democrats have estimated that the cost would be $93 billion, not including the cost of peacekeeping and rebuilding efforts after a war.)

But today, Mr. Daniels sought to play down his former colleague's remarks. ''That wasn't a budget estimate,'' he said. ''It was more of a historical benchmark than any analysis of what a conflict today might entail.''

Pentagon officials say the cost of munitions in a potential war with Iraq will not be materially more than the cost of munitions in the 1991 gulf war. The reason, they say, is that the military now uses more precision-guided bombs, which are far more accurate, so fewer are needed.

In 1991, about 10 percent of bombs and munitions were precision guided. In the conflict in Afghanistan, the share of precision weapons rose to about 60 percent.
Although precision-guided bombs cost more than conventional munitions, they are not always exorbitantly more expensive, at least by Pentagon standards. Many of the ''smart'' bombs used in Afghanistan, for example, were simply 2,000-pound unguided bombs with a $20,000 mechanism attached to the bomb's tail that allowed it to be steered to a target by satellite.

The major costs of an Iraq war, Pentagon officials say, will be those for dispatching tens of thousands of military personnel overseas, feeding and sheltering them, and maintaining equipment deployed to the gulf.

We were so snookered by men intent on a war and the cost be damned.

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This was the most recent estimate I could find on what the war as cost SO FAR....(2March, 2016)

http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/fl/Cost-of-Iraq-War.htm

Quote:The Iraq War was a military conflict that lasted seven years (2003 - 2011) and cost $1.038 trillion. The Bush Administrationlaunched it to eliminate the threat from Iraq's Sunni leader, Saddam Hussein. President Bush announced Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq War was part of the War on Terror. That was launched in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by al-Qaida. 


The War added more than $1 trillion to the U.S. debt. It includes increases to the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Veterans Administration (VA) base budgets. Although some of those increases are attributable to the War in Afghanistan, the DoD base budget grew by $200 billion and the VA budget expanded by $32.5 billion during the Iraq War. 

It also includes the $805.4 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds specifically dedicated to the Iraq War.  This is more than the $738 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars spent on the Vietnam War.

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But our deficit problems are because of welfare bums and food stamps.