Iraq war winds down, but costs soar

[maddezmom]

President Obama announced recently with much fanfare that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will be down to 50,000 by the end of August. All troops will withdraw by December next year. Clearly it is good news that the United States is finally extricating itself from what has been a long, bloody and unnecessary conflict. But drawing down the number of troops doesn't mean the end of spending money. Many of the biggest costs are still to be paid.


It is a sobering thought that the peak year for paying out disability claims to World War I veterans didn't occur until 1969 - more than 50 years after the armistice. The peak for paying out World War II benefits was in the 1980s, and we have not yet reached the peak cost for Vietnam veterans. Even the Gulf War of 1991, which lasted just six weeks, costs more than $4 billion a year in disability compensation.

We have already spent close to $1 trillion in Iraq - about $800 billion for direct military combat operations plus extra costs hidden in the budget for things like military medicine, recruiting, veterans' care and contractors' insurance. But there are at least four big costs ahead.

First is the enormous ongoing cost of providing for our veterans. Two million U.S. troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past nine years. Already 450,000 have filed for disability compensation for something that happened to them while they were in combat. The vast majority of these claims will be approved, and the benefit payments will continue for decades.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/14/IN2N1EOTK2.DTL#ixzz0wfSNsupO

[Stardust]

1. How many contractors will still be kept there. They aren't cheap either. nt