Iraq war may cost U.S. trillions

[sonz]

The U.S.-led invasion in IRAQ continues to be a drain on the American taxpayers' pocketbooks.

People might agree that the former Iraqi regime lead by the ousted leader SADDAM HUSSEIN was an oppressive and evil regime, but what people can’t ignore is the fact revealed by the 9/11 Commission in its final report that IRAQ was not involved in the planning or execution of the September 11 attacks and did not have a "collaborative operational relationship" with Al Qaeda network, believed to be responsible for the attacks.

So again the war wasn’t launched for the set of lies presented by the U.S. President in the run up to the invasion.

A new study co-authored by a Nobel Prize winning economist found that the ILLEGAL WAR on Iraq is likely to cost the United States between one and two trillion dollars, far above Bush’s administration's projections.

The research released Monday by Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, a 2001 Nobel Prize laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, and economy professor Linda Bilmes of Harvard University, further noted that the current official assessments of the war cost fail to consider key expenses expected to burden the U.S. budget the coming years.

The study’s authors provided "conservative" and "moderate" estimates of expenses incurred by American society since the start of the war.

It moreover mentioned the “increasing medical expenses to treat more than 16 000 wounded military personnel, accelerated depreciation of military hardware on the battlefield and the ripple effect on higher oil prices on the U.S. economy.”

Before the March 2003 U.S.-led INVASION started, the then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted that Iraq war would be "an affordable endeavour" rejecting other experts’ estimates of total Iraq war costs at $100 to $200 billion as "very, very high".

Stiglitz and Bilmes wrote: "Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how large they are. We can state, with some degree of confidence, that they exceed a trillion dollars."

The academics said about 20 per cent of the rise in oil prices since the war began - could be directly attributed to the conflict- "This had already cost the U.S. about $33 billion".

In the run-up to IRAQ WAR, Lawrence Lindsey, a former chief White House economist, suggested that the war costs could probably reach $200bn.

Officials at the Bush administration rejected the study’s estimates as a gross overestimation.

America, according to congressional officials, already spent $251bn on combat operations in Iraq since the invasion started, and still funds operations at nearly six billion dollars a month.

But economists reject these figures saying they fail to take into consideration the disability payments to veterans over the course of their lifetime, the cost of replacing military equipment and munitions.

The direct budgetary costs of the Iraq war to the U.S. taxpayer, as estimates the study, would be in the range of $750bn to $1.1 trillion. It also stated that the Bush administration would consider withdrawing troops in 2006.

Last year, a U.S. military's top generals revealed that the Pentagon is spending more than $5.8 billion a month on the war in Iraq, a 50 percent increase above the $4 billion-a-month benchmark the Pentagon used to estimate the cost of the war.

The U.S. Army spends $4.7 million a month, the Air Force spends $800 million a month transporting soldiers and flying combat missions and the Marine Corps spends $300 million a month, the four service chiefs informed the House Armed Services Committee.

However the WHITE HOUSE had always tried to downplay published reports of the high and increasing costs of the war.

In January 2003 and before Iraq war was launched, the U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH said an attack by SADDAM HUSSEIN or a "terrorist ally" "would cripple our economy."

"This economy cannot afford to stand an attack," Bush said. "And I'm going to protect the American people. The economy's strong. It's resilient. Obviously, so long as somebody's looking for work, we've got to continue to make it strong and resilient."

But the result is the war has crippled the American economy and continues to devastate the once-strong Iraqi economy.