Four hundred and twenty eight dollars per person

[Fumesucker]

$3,000,000,000,000/7,000,000,000 people = $428 per person.

That's $428 for each of the 7 billion people on the planet, the true cost of the Iraq war as calculated by Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

I have to say that until I ran the numbers I never dreamed it was that much per living human being.

[polly7]

1. Where did all that money come from?

Honest question. If it was all from the U.S., I'll keep my nose out of it.

If it was from outside the U.S., I feel sick inside knowing how much $428.00 per person would do for the starving and struggling children all over the world.

[Jackpine Radical]

4. I would imagine the Brits & others put some money into it, but

probably 90% or more will come out of our hide. Eventually. I think we may still be paying for the Spanish-American War.

Anyway, regardless of where the money comes from, it was used for killing and destruction, and people will be suffering from the consequences of its expenditure for generations.

So I think if your'e a Canuckistani, I think you have every right to protest what this brainless behemoth to your south is doing to the world.

[jwirr]

5. We probably borrowed it.

[glasshouses]

7. It came from no where

Just a click of a mouse

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. That's the cost to the US alone

The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More

...
Why doesn't the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month -- $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we'll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

But the costs to our society and economy are far greater. When a young soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, his or her family will receive a U.S. government check for just $500,000 (combining life insurance with a "death gratuity&quot -- far less than the typical amount paid by insurance companies for the death of a young person in a car accident. The stark "budgetary cost" of $500,000 is clearly only a fraction of the total cost society pays for the loss of life -- and no one can ever really compensate the families. Moreover, disability pay seldom provides adequate compensation for wounded troops or their families. Indeed, in one out of five cases of seriously injured soldiers, someone in their family has to give up a job to take care of them.

But beyond this is the cost to the already sputtering U.S. economy. All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that's a conservative estimate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html

A huge cost to Iraq itself, of course (hundreds of thousands dead), plus costs to others.

[polly7]

11. Yes, I don't imagine anyone will ever know the true cost to Iraq,

not to mention the loss of lives and potential .... but the infrastructure, environment, hospitals, schools, cultural sites and irreplaceable objects - the cradle of civilization, I can't see, as long as the 'war on terror' is still being waged destabilizing everything in its path, that those things will ever be repaired.

Yet that huge embassy is funded and maintained just fine, completely self-sustainable - no need to go down to the river where corpses once floated for water, that's for sure.

[daredtowork]

10. Dipped into Social Security! nt

[onenote]

13. Like most such cost estimates, its a mixture of direct and indirect, present and future costs

The $3 trillion cost estimate doesn't reflect direct present costs -- costs that required a check to be written. It includes the author's estimates of various indirect costs they attribute to the Iraq war (including the costs of the Afghanistan war, the future costs in insurance, medical care etc. for veterans, and the "impact" on the US economy.

[DeSwiss]

14. We put it on the card......

- Our credit card from the Bank of China.

Here's our balance statement from last year:

[polly7]

17. That makes me sad for all the good people in the U.S. struggling who

will have to pay it back for decades, especially the children. I'll never in my lifetime understand what those who want war so badly justify the cost of it with. It's sick (for any country).

[LiberalEsto]

23. Social Security n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

25. A better question is, "Where did it GO?"

[OnyxCollie]

2. "This nation can afford to spend what is needed..."

Quadrennial Defense Review Report
September 30, 2001

This Quadrennial Defense Review was the product of the senior civilian
and military leadership of the Department of Defense. It benefited from
extensive consultation with the President of the United States. It was truly
"top down" in that the decisions taken on strategy, forces, capabilities, and
risks resulted from months of deliberations and consultation among the
most senior Defense Department leadership. This report outlines the key
changes needed to preserve America's safety and security in the years
to come.

The Quadrennial Defense Review and the accompanying report were
largely completed before the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the
United States. In important ways, these attacks confirm the strategic
direction and planning principles that resulted from this review,
particularly its emphasis on homeland defense, on surprise, on preparing
for asymmetric threats, on the need to develop new concepts of
deterrence, on the need for a capabilities-based strategy, and on the need
to balance deliberately the different dimensions of risk. However, the
attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 will require us to move
forward more rapidly in these directions, even while we are engaged in
the war against terrorism.

The vast array of complex policy, operational, and even constitutional
issues concerning how we organize and prepare to defend the American
people are now receiving unprecedented attention throughout the
United States government. Importantly, since the scope of homeland
security responsibilities span an array of federal, state, and local
organizations, it also will require enhanced inter-agency processes and
capabilities to effectively defend the United States against attacks. The
recent establishment of the Office of Homeland Security will galvanize
this vital effort.


Finally, the loss of life and damage to our economy from the attack of
September 11, 2001 should give us a new perspective on the question of
what this country can afford for its defense. It would be reckless to press
our luck with false economies or gamble with our children's future. This
nation can afford to spend what is needed to deter the adversaries of
tomorrow and to underpin our prosperity. Those costs do not begin to
compare with the cost in human lives and resources if we fail to do so.

[Reter]

3. Or $42.80 per year with the war being 10 years

Staggering.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. It depends on how you look at it.

Really, we got a bargain on the war. We got it on the installment plan.

It would take us maybe a century to pay it off, but by then the biosphere will have melted down anyway, so we'll probly get off the hook for the last part of the repayment. And we don't even have to worry about all the birth defects from Depleted Uranium in Iraq for the same reason.

[Fumesucker]

12. I used to hang out with a genius/wizard level tech guy

He really understood the ins and the outs of a wide variety of tech.

The thing he told me that stuck with me the most is that in any sort of project there almost always comes a point where with simple arithmetic you find out if it's doable or not.

Simple arithmetic can be really good for revealing the scale of things, in this case the scale of a true world class fuckup.

What makes it worse is that it was an unforced error, a purely voluntary decision made in fullness of time.

You don't roll out a new product in August.

[shenmue]

9. I want my money

Everyone from Halliburton should be in jail.

[arikara]

18. Everybody who voted for war should be in jail.

Bush, Cheney and the PNAC'ers deserve to be in Gitmo with bags over their heads.

[world wide wally]

15. But Rumsfeld and Cheney promised that the war would pay for itself in 6 months.

Thanks, Obama.

[whereisjustice]

16. Excellent post

[C Moon]

19. It was all about photo ops for that guy, wasn't it. Of course, the pretzel scar was a bad one.

[stuffmatters]

20. That's almost $10,000 for every person...adult and child...counted in the US 2010 census

[Jack Rabbit]

21. Wars are expensive, but those who profit from them don't pay taxes

They should at least go to prison for war crimes, if not the guillotine.

[LiberalEsto]

22. Our Social Security Trust Fund helped pay for this n/t

[Cryptoad]

24. I got that warm fuzzy feeling down in my pants

that Jeb can pickup right where W left off! Poor Folks still have lots of money to spend!

[Turbineguy]

26. That's pretty impressive

even for a guy as skilled at fucking things up as Dubya.