PART II FACTS ABOUT OUR WARS: LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

Part II is a summary continuation of excerpts of the recent work of the Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz in his THE THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR:

LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

* Wars should not be funded through "emergency supplementals" except in the first year of a conflict;

* The administration should create a comprehensive set of military accounts, which include the expenditures of the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Labor, as well as Social Security and health care benefits that arise from military service;

* The Department of Defense should be required to present clean, auditable financial statements to congress, for which the Secretary of Defense and the Chief financial Office are held personally responsible;

* The administration and the CBO should provide regular estimates of the micro and macroeconomic costs of a military engagement;

* The administration should be required to notify Congress of any procedural changes that might affect the normal bureaucratic checks & balances on the flow of information. The Freedom of Information Act (which enshrines the basic principles of citizens' right to know what their government is doing) should be strengthened, with a more narrow carving out of exceptions, and with congressional oversight on these exceptions.

* Congress should review the heavy reliance on contractors in wartime. In particular, the use of contractors for "security services" should be limited, both in number and in duration, with a detailed justification provided for why the military itself cannot provide these services. Careful attention should be paid to hidden costs borne by the public, of the kind uncovered in this book, such as payment for disability and death through government-provided insurance.

Contractors have landed lucrative contracts to rebuild infrastructure and to feed American troops. Much of this work has been poorly managed and inadequately monitored, and yet private contractors have become indispensable to the war operation. There are serious fundamental flaws with this reliance on the private sector.

The GAO and other government watchdogs have repeatedly documented cases of over-billing, over payment, and outright profiteering during the Iraq war. This has increased to operational costs. A large percentage of military contracts have been awarded without full competition. Giant contractors have become adept at gaming the system.

* The military should not be permitted to call upon the National Guard or the Reserves for more than one year, unless it can demonstrate that it is not feasible to increase the requisite size of the armed forces.

* There should be a presumption that the costs of any conflict lasting more than one year should be born by current taxpayers, through the levying of a war tax. The financial costs of running the war should be borne by its current citizens, not simply transferred to the next generation. This means that current revenues must cover current spending; a war tax should be levied to fund such expenditures.

End of Excerpts from THE THREE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR by Joseph Stiglitz who was given the Nobel Prize in Economics.