PART ONE: FACTS ABOUT OUR WARS!

Perhaps few will pay attention to facts, being bound to a political party or other beliefs ~ still, what follows are facts:

1. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it - in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed...The costs of the war are real even if the have been deferred, possibly to another generation.

2. Operating costs for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4 billion in 2003, and with Afghanistan, the total is $16 billion a month.

3. The use of "emergency" funds to pay for nearly all of five years of war makes a mockery of the budget process.

4. When we add the present discounted value of interest through 2017 alone, the total, with interest, comes to $3.5 trillion. These are just the budgetary costs.

5. The full tally: The numbers are staggering. In the realistic-moderate scenario - the numbers that we believe conservatively best capture the cost of the Iraq venture, even without counting interest - the total for Iraq alone is more than $ 4 trillion; including Afghanistan, it increases to $5 trillion.

6. American's standing in the world has never been lower.


SOURCE: All of the above are excerpts from THE THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR,
THE TRUE COST OF THE IRAQ CONFLICT by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize in Economics.
New York: W.W. Norton @ Company, 2008.