Republican stupidity gets expensive: $6,000,000,000,000+

[RandomGuy]

Stupidity or lying, still haven't quit figured out which.

Too stupid to know what they were getting into and how much it might cost, or they knew and lied through their teeth about it. More evidence for the latter than the former.

-------------------------------

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.

The war has killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civilians and may have contributed to the deaths of as many as four times that number, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

When security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers were included, the war's death toll rose to an estimated 176,000 to 189,000, the study said.

The report, the work of about 30 academics and experts, was published in advance of the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003.

It was also an update of a 2011 report the Watson Institute produced ahead of the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that assessed the cost in dollars and lives from the resulting wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

The 2011 study said the combined cost of the wars was at least $3.7 trillion, based on actual expenditures from the U.S. Treasury and future commitments, such as the medical and disability claims of U.S. war veterans.

That estimate climbed to nearly $4 trillion in the update.

The estimated death toll from the three wars, previously at 224,000 to 258,000, increased to a range of 272,000 to 329,000 two years later.

Excluded were indirect deaths caused by the mass exodus of doctors and a devastated infrastructure, for example, while the costs left out trillions of dollars in interest the United States could pay over the next 40 years.

The interest on expenses for the Iraq war could amount to about $4 trillion during that period, the report said.

The report also examined the burden on U.S. veterans and their families, showing a deep social cost as well as an increase in spending on veterans. The 2011 study found U.S. medical and disability claims for veterans after a decade of war totaled $33 billion. Two years later, that number had risen to $134.7 billion.

FEW GAINS

The report concluded the United States gained little from the war while Iraq was traumatized by it. The war reinvigorated radical Islamist militants in the region, set back women's rights, and weakened an already precarious healthcare system, the report said. Meanwhile, the $212 billion reconstruction effort was largely a failure with most of that money spent on security or lost to waste and fraud, it said.

Former President George W. Bush's administration cited its belief that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government held weapons of mass destruction to justify the decision to go to war. U.S. and allied forces later found that such stockpiles did not exist.

Supporters of the war argued that intelligence available at the time concluded Iraq held the banned weapons and noted that even some countries that opposed the invasion agreed with the assessment.

"Action needed to be taken," said Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank.

Bucci, who was unconnected to the Watson study, agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs.

"If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in," Bucci said. "Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short." [That is what they told us. Those of us who knew better were ignored-RG]

Bucci said the toppling of Saddam and the results of an unforeseen conflict between U.S.-led forces and al Qaeda militants drawn to Iraq were positive outcomes of the war.

"It was really in Iraq that 'al Qaeda central' died," Bucci said. "They got waxed."

(Editing by Paul Simao)

http://news.yahoo.com/iraq-war-costs-u-more-2-trillion-study-144627599.html

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

To be fair, no few Democrats went along with this collossal mistake, but it was the Republican administration that did this, and it was a large number of rank and file Republicans that acted as cool-aid drinking cheerleaders for it.

I cannot forgive the GOP for this. Never, ever.

[TeyshaBlue]

To be fair, no few Democrats went along with this collossal mistake, but it was the Republican administration that did this, and it was a large number of rank and file Republicans that acted as cool-aid drinking cheerleaders for it.

I cannot forgive the GOP for this. Never, ever.

You lost me at the "To be fair" part.

[RandomGuy]

You lost me at the "To be fair" part.

Not many democrats in the Bush administration. They had some pretty strict ideological litmus tests, if you recall.

[TeyshaBlue]

Absolutely. Also, irrelevant to your OP.

[TeyshaBlue]

Quick question. Would this have happened sans 9/11?

[DarrinS]

You beat boutons to it

congrats

[RandomGuy]

Absolutely. Also, irrelevant to your OP.

I disagree.

What political party held the White house in 2003?

[RandomGuy]

Quick question. Would this have happened sans 9/11?

Likely not.

[DarrinS]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32382&p=6416121&viewfull=1#post6416121

[RandomGuy]

You beat boutons to it

congrats

Thank you.

Now, deal with it.

The next time I hear some Republican drone on about government spending, this becomes a rather big albatross around the neck of the GOP.

"But we spend too much on entitlements ...." "Six trillion"

"The governement spends..... " "Six trillion"

I have stopped viewing the GOP as the party of fiscal responsibility.

I see no honest attempts to reclaim that mantle. Do you?

[TeyshaBlue]

Likely not.

Why would democrats go along with "this collossal mistake"?

[DarrinS]

So, is it 3.7 trillion? 4.4 trillion? or 6 trillion?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war-idUSTRE75S25320110629

[TeyshaBlue]

Thank you.

Now, deal with it.

The next time I hear some Republican drone on about government spending, this becomes a rather big albatross around the neck of the GOP.

"But we spend too much on entitlements ...." "Six trillion"

"The governement spends..... " "Six trillion"

I have stopped viewing the GOP as the party of fiscal responsibility.

I see no honest attempts to reclaim that mantle. Do you?

nope.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32382&p=6416121&viewfull=1#post6416121

Your point is...?

Respectfully:

If you are trying to make a point, you should add some commentary.

[Winehole23]

So, is it 3.7 trillion? 4.4 trillion? or 6 trillion?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war-idUSTRE75S25320110629somewhere in that range, most likely. was it worth the blood and treasure?

[DarrinS]

somewhere in that range, most likely. was it worth the blood and treasure?

I don't think so

[RandomGuy]

So, is it 3.7 trillion? 4.4 trillion? or 6 trillion?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/29/us-usa-war-idUSTRE75S25320110629

(sighs)

The UK article actually misquoted the reuters article, not that you noticed.

The UK article said that the cost could run "as high as" $3.7T, but that referenced a study in 2011, that actually said the cost would be "AT LEAST"... $3.7T


Cost of war at least $3.7 trillion and counting

Given this study is more in depth than the Brown study in 2011, with more data and costs considered, the answer to your questions is:

$6,000,000,000,000+

Same as it was before.

[DarrinS]

Hillary and Biden voted for it -- as did numerous other innocent democrats.

[RandomGuy]

Hillary and Biden voted for it -- as did numerous other innocent democrats.

Already acknowleged.

Further:

Some democrats would have gone along with it, almost no matter what.

Now, since you brought it up, I get to ask a fair question that I know you either cannot, nor will you even try to, answer:

How many Democrats who voted for the Iraq war did so because the Republican administration lied to them about it?

[DarrinS]

How many Democrats who voted for the Iraq war would have done so, if the Republican administration had not lied to them about it?


What lies were told to the innocent Democrats?

[DarrinS]

wait for it...wait for it...

[RandomGuy]

FWIW:
House of representives voting yes as %, by party:
96% --GOP
39% --Democratic

Senate:
95%--GOP
72%--Democratic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution

One can assume that fewer people of both parties would have voted for it, had they not been lied to.

That still leaves the repsonsiblity with the Republican administration that pushed for the war, doesn't it?

Six trillion.

[clambake]

What lies were told to the innocent Democrats?

i don't think they were innocent, just naive.

i knew they were lying when i watched powell's address to the un.

when did you find out?

[Trainwreck2100]

Bush used our immense patriotism at the time to throw us at Iraq, for no good reason. The republicans however kept with the "you hate america" shit when most people said we should get the fuck out.

[RandomGuy]

wait for it...wait for it...


Defense Secretary Dick Cheney on why they didn't finish Saddam... i.e. it would have cost too much.
pT7Ik_X1HU0

Not quite what he was saying 10 years later.. was it?

Even in 2004, he couldn't be honest about the costs...
7ZMSlhemSOc

Sorry. You got lied to.

I would guess you believed it all, without bothering to critically examine the claims.

[RandomGuy]

What lies were told to the innocent Democrats?

Sorry, D. I don't even have to take your bait and re-hash the WMD shit to prove my point.

The administration up-sold the benefits, and down-played the costs.

Either would make the Republicans culpable as a whole, given their almost unanymous support for their "team" in the White House.

Given your preferred party's self-proclaimed uniformity and pressure to conform, any cries that Republicans in general aren't responsible, rings hollow, don't you think?

Sorry, the GOP has created an almost hysterical group-think that puts the most rabidly politically correct leftie to shame.

[baseline bum]

i don't think they were innocent, just naive.

i knew they were lying when i watched powell's address to the un.

when did you find out?

You weren't convinced by those drawings he did of the mobile weapons labs? Can't believe Powell fell on his sword for those faggots Bush & Cheney pushing intelligence that he knew was complete bullshit.

[clambake]

You weren't convinced by those drawings he did of the mobile weapons labs? Can't believe Powell fell on his sword for those faggots Bush & Cheney pushing intelligence that he knew was complete bullshit.

that address was embarrassing to watch.

[baseline bum]

Bush used our immense patriotism at the time to throw us at Iraq, for no good reason. The republicans however kept with the "you hate america" shit when most people said we should get the fuck out.

LOL, the good old days when you hated America if you didn't stand with the president.

[TeyshaBlue]

LOL, the good old days when you hated America if you didn't stand with the president.

Fairly common meme in war times, tbh.

[TeyshaBlue]

that address was embarrassing to watch.

Had to be polaroids of Powell at a Tijuana donkey show or something like that involved.

[baseline bum]

Fairly common meme in war times, tbh.

When is it not war time in this country?

[TeyshaBlue]

Fair question.

[TeyshaBlue]

btw...what the hell is your avatar?

[clambake]

chinese dam, i think.

[TeyshaBlue]

That looks about right.

[ElNono]

The extra cool part is where they didn't include any of that spending on the budget... that's from the party now demanding not only a budget, but a balanced budget...

[clambake]

or its a head dress for a circus elephant.

[clambake]

The extra cool part is where they didn't include any of that spending on the budget... that's from the party now demanding not only a budget, but a balanced budget...

why do you hate america?

[TeyshaBlue]

or its a head dress for a circus elephant.

get help.

[ElNono]

why do you hate america?

I love America... that's where I get my 93 octane gas from, tbh

[TeyshaBlue]

I love America... that's where I get my 93 octane gas from, tbh

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/Ohhh.gif

[baseline bum]

btw...what the hell is your avatar?

Is the symbol of democracy.

[clambake]

I love America... that's where I get my 93 octane gas from, tbh

thats it.

i'm buying a drone.

[clambake]

Is the symbol of democracy.

so its for a circus donkey.

[TeyshaBlue]

thats it.

i'm buying a drone.

:lol:lol:lol

[baseline bum]

so its for a circus donkey.

Need to send your ass to the gulag if you dont't shut the fuck up tbh. Bring the wife and kids too.

[clambake]

Need to send your ass to the gulag if you dont't shut the fuck up tbh. Bring the wife and kids too.

understood

[TeyshaBlue]

Need to send your ass to the gulag if you dont't shut the fuck up tbh. Bring the wife and kids too.

calm down and take out your hula hoop.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/HulaHoop.jpg

[baseline bum]

calm down.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/HulaHoop.jpg

Indeed

-4hMk9vNjMg

[Wild Cobra]

The mentality of you liberals.

Democrats have held congress since when? Can you say 110th and 11th congress. That's four years of demonrat rule. Still hold the senate.

A democrat has been president since when?

Why not just end the war on terror. Stop funding the costs. Nobody in their right mind can blame continued and future spending on republicans.

[TeyshaBlue]

Why not just end the war on terror. Stop funding the costs. Nobody in their right mind can blame continued and future spending on republicans.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/GoodGrief.gif

[Wild Cobra]

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x262/Wild_Cobra/Misc/Teyshagivesup_zps8c8d4ba2.gif
I see you decided to put your computer down and stop posting nonsense.

[Drachen]

http://www.slideshowblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/projecting_projector.jpg

[Wild Cobra]

Drachen with nonsense too...

What has SpursTalk come to?

[ElNono]

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/SMH.gif

[spursncowboys]

RG: Are we going to start counting interest in everything?




This we cannot go back and say this isn't working. Let's change it or get rid of it altogether. But there is much in the federal government that we can look at from a decade or more lens and decide if it is working and if we should maintain funding

[spursncowboys]

The extra cool part is where they didn't include any of that spending on the budget... that's from the party now demanding not only a budget, but a balanced budget...
What's even funnier is how funding for a military at war is put in the same light as paying for people who do not want to. Out of the big three in the budget, one is covered in the constitution.

[spursncowboys]

That makes me want to watch the wire

[Drachen]

Indeed

-4hMk9vNjMg

This is hypnotizing.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

calm down and take out your hula hoop.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y64/teyshablue/HulaHoop.jpg
:lmao

[ElNono]

What's even funnier is how funding for a military at war is put in the same light as paying for people who do not want to. Out of the big three in the budget, one is covered in the constitution.

That's actually very debatable. AFAIK, there's no provision mandating funding for the military in the constitution. Article I, Section 8 grants the power to fund the Military to Congress ("To raise and support Armies", "To provide and maintain a Navy"), but does not mandate it to.

Additionally, the predominant Hamiltonian view over the General Welfare clause would indicate that Congress has indeed the power to spend as it wants.

[sjacquemotte]

That's actually very debatable. AFAIK, there's no provision mandating funding for the military in the constitution. Article I, Section 8 grants the power to fund the Military to Congress ("To raise and support Armies", "To provide and maintain a Navy"), but does not mandate it to.

Additionally, the predominant Hamiltonian view over the General Welfare clause would indicate that Congress has indeed the power to spend as it wants.

Seriously... narrow view reading it for military but as broad as you can he get when it comes to Medicare/caid? got it

[ElNono]

Seriously... narrow view reading it for military but as broad as you can he get when it comes to Medicare/caid? got it

what narrow reading? I would agree that the General Welfare clause has been debated since Hamilton vs Madison, but I can't really think of any recent ruling (past 50 years) that didn't adhere to the Hamiltonian view.

[boutons_deux]

It's not "Repug stupidity", it's the decades-long VWRC/1%/corporate/Repug strategy of enriching/protecting the 1% and fucking the 99%.

Guess who profits and guess who pays?


GOP and Obama Ready to Make Needy Seniors Pay for Bush Wars

Now, even President Obama has accepted the GOP "frame" of a nation mired in debt, when it was the Republican Party under Bush – many of them still in Congress – who wrapped themselves in the flag and cheered on the shock and awe of multi-trillion dollar debt and death. And any subsequent growth in the debt is in large part due to the unemployment and loss of productivity resulting from the financial crash.

Obama -- always great at campaigning and, except on rare occasions, generally poor at debunking the Republican control over debate on public policy -- either is again adopting the GOP memes or actually agrees with the scaling back of earned benefits for Americans who worked hard for them. As Talking Point Memo headlines a March 14 article: "Obama to GOP: I'm Serious About Cutting the Social Safety Net." In return, Obama reportedly wants an unspecified amount of additional revenue into the treasury.

What's most disturbing about Obama's willingness to apparently concede means testing in Medicare and Chained CPI inflation adjustments for Social Security (both of which will decrease benefits to many seniors) is that he was elected on policies of preserving both programs without cuts. One can only speculate that Obama, who is careful to stay in the campaign funding good graces of Wall Street, actually has drunk the Republican water treated not with fluoride, but with rank deception.

Basically, the deficit of the United States would likely not exist (or be relatively minimal) if it were not for the unfunded Bush wars and the tax cuts for the rich – almost universally supported by Republicans when they happened. The wars were also supported by far too many Democrats.

When one considers the trillions of dollars that the wars contributed (and still contribute even if winding down or "officially" over) to the US debt, the GOP effort -- now combined with an Obama endorsement of Medicare and Social Security earned benefit cutbacks – leads to a distressing conclusion: the Republicans and now Obama are asking senior citizens to essentially pay for the wars by receiving less money when some are on the edge of economic survival as it is.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17861-gop-and-obama-ready-to-make-needy-seniors-pay-for-bush-wars

[Winehole23]

Linda J. Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School estimates that the wars bin Laden provoked the U.S. into launching over the past decade have cost “somewhere between $4 and $6 trillion (https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=8956&type=WPN).” She reaches that staggeringly high total by calculating not just what the U.S. spent on fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also what it will spend on veterans’ health care and benefits; equipment refurbishment; future commitments made to the Iraqi and Afghan governments the U.S. sponsors; and the repayment of the debt incurred by financing the wars through foreign borrowing. Notably, by Bilmes’ framework, the real costs of the wars will only manifest long after the troops have come home.


She’s also under-counting. The shadow wars in Yemen (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/yemen-war/all/), Pakistan, east Africa (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/10/secret-drone-base/) and north-central Africa (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/military-drones/) will not cost nearly as much as the Army-intensive wars of Iraq or Afghanistan. But they’ll still cost something, either through leased infrastructure to base aircraft and special-operations forces; political commitments to host governments; support to allied war efforts (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/01/hagel-mali/); and some personnel costs. All these wars have the same wellspring as Iraq and Afghanistan: U.S. overreaction to terrorism.


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

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/03/trillion-dollar-wars/

[boutons_deux]

USA - FUCK YEAH!

:lol

[TeyshaBlue]

USA - FUCK YEAH!

:lol




Fuck All Y'all Bubbas

[boutons_deux]

Blair lied as much as dickhead's gang

Tony Blair and Iraq: The damning evidence

Hitherto unseen evidence given to the Chilcot Inquiry by British intelligence has revealed that former prime minister Tony Blair was told that Iraq had, at most, only a trivial amount of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that Libya was in this respect a far greater threat.

Intelligence officers have disclosed that just the day before Mr Blair went to visit president George Bush in April 2002, he appeared to accept this but returned a "changed man" and subsequently ordered the production of dossiers to "find the intelligence" that he wanted to use to justify going to war.

This and other secret evidence (given in camera) to the inquiry will, The Independent on Sunday understands, be used as the basis for severe criticism of the former prime minister when the Chilcot report is published.

Mr Blair is said to have "realised" and "understood" that Libya was the real threat and that he knew "it would not be sensible to lead the argument on Saddam and the WMD issue" according to evidence of a conversation on 4 April 2002, the day before he flew to the US to spend a weekend with Mr Bush.

By contrast, Iraq had no nuclear weapons and any actual WMD would be "very, very small" and would fit on to the "back of a petrol lorry", according to one senior MI6 officer. They admitted the danger from WMD was "all in the cranium of just a few scientists, who we never did meet and we have been unable to meet ever since".

Yet the weekend at Crawford in April 2002 marked Mr Blair's conversion to Mr Bush's way of thinking. The former US president was determined to deal with Saddam Hussein. On Friday 5 April, Mr Blair and Mr Bush spent the evening alone, without their advisers. By the end of the weekend Mr Blair appeared to be a changed man, where previously he had said "we don't do regime change", according to Admiral Lord Boyce, former Chief of the Defence Staff.

The findings will inform a highly critical attack on Mr Blair when the Chilcot Inquiry publishes its report later this year. "Chilcot has the full story and it's a very complex one," a former senior MI6 officer, who would not be named, told The IoS.

And top-secret British government papers suggesting that the two leaders had made a pact to act against Iraq have been given to the inquiry by barrister and Plaid Cymru MP Elfyn Llwyd. The document was leaked to him after the invasion.

After the invasion in March 2003, SIS4 suggested, there was "a sort of recognition that the WMD thing had served its purpose; we had got in, we had done the war".


"This report will be absolutely damning on Blair's style of government, the decision-making process and the planning and execution for its aftermath," said a source close to the inquiry, speaking before the 10th anniversary on Tuesday of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue.


One authority on Iraq, Toby Dodge of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees. "I think they will rip into him for his style of government, and that there wasn't due process," he said. "It's clear the way the intelligence was handled, filtered out and shaped was an issue. This is a perversion of the use of intelligence."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-and-iraq-the-damning-evidence-8563133.html?printService=print

UK might actually prosecute, but I doubt. accountability doesn't exist for the 1% and plutocrats.

[boutons_deux]

Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War

Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.


Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.


The No. 1 recipient?


Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.


The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.


Who were Nos. 2 and 3?


Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.


As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.


According to the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the level of corruption by defense contractors may be as high as $60 billion. Disciplined soldiers that would traditionally do many of the tasks are commissioned by private and publicly listed companies.

http://www.zcommunications.org/cheneys-halliburton-made-39-5-billion-on-iraq-war-by-angelo-young?

War is a business, like any other. Profits at all costs, not matter who or what gets screwed. Tax payers are war's ATM.

So lets cut medicare, medicaid, SS, etc, etc to pay for the MICS $100Bs.

[boutons_deux]

Overwhelmed By Rising Health Costs, Pentagon Pushes For More Out-Of-Pocket Fees For Retired Soldiers (http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/09/1838681/pentagon-health-costs/)
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/09/1838681/pentagon-health-costs/

Repugs bogus war expenditures will go one for many decades, for health care and interest payments.

[boutons_deux]

here's a huge cost, not always in $Bs, but in damaged brains, damaged marriages, damaged kids, etc, etc, for Repug bullshit wars.

Shell Shock Lite


http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175688/tomgram%3A_jeremiah_goulka%2C_shell_shock_lite/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=54e114048e-TD_Goulka4_16_2013&utm_medium=email

but dubya was quoted this week as still "feeling good" about his decisions and no regrets.

I'm sure rummy and dickhead are equally feeling psychopahtically guiltless.