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Thursday, March 11, 2004 |
The Cost of War site calculates the cost of war real-time. Calculations are based on the cost of deployment and return and interest.
In regards to calculating the cost of deployment and return, this is how the figures are derived:
To keep the Cost of War counter accurate, we periodically readjust our estimate to keep up with the the announced costs of the invasion. The most recent adjustment occurred on August 5, 2003. Department of Defense Comptroller Dov Zakheim on April 16, 2003 briefed the press on the Pentagon's estimate that to date the war had cost between $10-$12 billion in military operations, including the cost of airlift and sealift of troops and equipment, plus another $9 billion in the first 3 1/2 weeks of conflict. He added that the cost of returning troops and equipment to base would be another $5-$7 billion, for a total of between $24-$28 billion. We have taken the middle figure, $26 billion, and used it as the cost of the war up until April 17.
The Fiscal 2003 Supplemental Appropriations Bill, (H.R. 1559) allocated some $8 billion to garner foreign support for the war (in further military and economic aid to several countries, including Jordan, Israel, and Egypt) and to help reconstruct Iraq (including over $400 million to ensure the proper functioning of Iraq's oil industry). The entire legislation is available through the Library of Congress legislative database; the Council for a Livable World published a useful summary. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 29 that by June 30 the US had already spent $2 billion in reconstruction funds, but Administration officials avoided saying how much would be spent on reconstruction in the coming months. We have included this $8 billion figure although it may be slightly high; if so, CostofWar.com will readjust it once the government provides more exact information.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on July 9 and in an interview on ABC's "This Week" on July 13 that the US military occupation is costing at least $3.9 billion a month.We began that rate on April 18.
In regards to calculating interest,
With the government projected to run one of the largest deficits in history, it is not enough to simply consider the cost of the war today; we must also consider how much money we will be spending on it for years to come. To this end, we include the cost of interest payments in our total cost of war. We have chosen to use 10-year Treasury Notes for this calculation, and we use an interest rate of 4%. These decisions are explained in greater detail below. The net result, however, is that the cost of the war is 40% higher than the stated cost, due to 4% simple interest for 10 years. Therefore, although the stated cost of the war on April 17 was $34 billion, the actual cost was closer to $47.6 billion, due to the $13.6 billion we will be spending in interest. In addition, the cost of occupation is more accurately stated as $5.46 billion monthly, of which $1.56 billion is interest.
At 8:31 AM today, the cost of the Iraqi war was:
$105,616,452,453
Consider what this money could have been used for--
- We could have paid for 10,666,026 children to attend a year of Head Start
- We could have insured 32,336,416 children for one year
- We could have hired 1,436,969 additional public school teachers for one year
- We could have provided 1,913,530 students four-year scholarships at public universities
- We could have built 1,077,728 additional public housing units
Someone should drop Kerry a line with these figures. They are great talking points, don't ya think?
10:09:39 PM  | |
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Craig Under reports at the end of his article "The Great Escape," published at Salon today this interesting monetary figure that sheds light on the unique relationship between Saudi Arabia and President Bush.
$1,477,100,000 (at least)
The amount of money that has flowed from the House of Saud to individuals and entities closely tied to the House of Bush.
An explanation of this number is coming up at Salon.com tomorrow. Can’t wait.
9:58:45 PM | |
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In the comments for yesterday's post "Hiding War's Wounds and Casualties," my friend Rex Winn closed his comment with the question [and I'm paraphrasing] "Why should we care about the 10,000 Iraqi's that have died in the war?"
Rex was trying to state the mindset many Americans have toward the people we are sent to war against. In one breath, we are there to save them. In the next breath, we seem not to care how many of them die. If you recall, the government in November or December of last year decided to stop counting Iraqi casualties. What does that really tell us about the worth of life?
I'm going to attempt to come up with an answer to Rex's question. I can do better than this I'm sure but I recently read and was greatly impressed by Sen. John Kerry's remarks to a Senate Hearing back in April 22, 1971 in which he was representing the veterans of Vietnam, asking the committee to better recognize the wounded and dead from the Vietnam war and to get the government to recognize their lies about the reasons for the war. What is most amazing to me is that his comments could be uttered in the committee hearings today on the lies that lead us into the Iraq war and they would fit.
In this speech, I think Kerry explains the plight of the people we are sent to fight but, in the end, end up fighting against.
Here are a few excerpts from that amazing speech:
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....
...[H]ow do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we are trying to do that, and we are doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President's last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says and says clearly: "But the issue, gentlemen, the issue, is Communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." But the point is they are not a free people now under us, they are not a free people and we cannot fight Communism all over the world, and I think we should have learned that lesson by now....
Change Communism to Terrorism and you have the makings of the administration’s current rhetoric.
We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country: the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions; also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free-fire zones, harassment, interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners - accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said: "My God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
We are also here to ask, we are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently: Where are the leaders of our country, where is the leadership? We are here to ask McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatric and so many others, where are they now that we, the men whom they sent off to war, have returned? These are commanders who have deserted their troops, and there is no more serious crime in the law of war.
The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never leave even their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They have left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun of this country.
Finally, this administration has done us the ultimate dishonor. They have attempted to disown us and the sacrifices we made for this country. In their blindness and fear they have tried to deny that we are veterans or that we served in Nam. We do not need their testimony. Our own scars and stumps of limbs are witness enough for others and for ourselves.
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission, to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and the fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more, and so when in thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead the place where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
(Excerpts taken from the transcript of Navy Lieutenant John Kerry testimony for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971)
9:45:45 PM | |
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