Iraq War Spending Deconstructed

Campus Report ^ | March 31, 2008 | Malcolm Kline

[bs9021]

Iraq War Spending Deconstructed

by: Malcolm A. Kline, March 31, 2008

...Two professors have actually made an earnest, exhaustive attempt to calculate the cost of the Iraq War but they look at it as two academics who have been through the revolving door to government jobs and back again to the Ivory Tower. “Defense comes to four percent of the Gross Domestic Product [GDP] but how much has GDP increased?” Linda J. Blimes said at the Center for American Progress (CAP) last week. “We are a wealthy country and in one sense can afford it but you have to look at opportunity costs.”

“The $600 billion could have been used to shore up social security or provide health care to kids.” A professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Blimes is the author, with Columbia’s Joseph E. Stiglitz, of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraqi Conflict.

She combines a concern for the elderly and children with a belief that their problems can best be solved by government programs. Indeed, her forthcoming book is The People Factor: Strengthening America by Strengthening Public Service. Moreover, although she critiques the manner in which the Pentagon crafts its budgets, her suggested remedy should give those concerned with defense pause. She wants to see “transparency in the Pentagon budget.” “We need a mini-Sarbanes-Oxley in the Pentagon,” she advises.

Securities traders say Sarb-Ox reporting requirements have led to a drying up of investment capital. America’s enemies may relish the thought of such a “transparent” U. S. Department of Defense.....

[adorno]

“The $600 billion could have been used to shore up social security or provide health care to kids.”

When you start out with the false premise that the function of government is to "take care" of people, then you end up with false conclusions.

The most important function of the federal government is to provide for the security of the country. That defense of the country overrides all other government functions. Without security, no other government functions could even take place.

[17th Miss Regt]

“The $600 billion could have been used to shore up social security or provide health care to kids.”

In addition, even if this were a basic function of government, I categorically reject the assumption that they would have done something as sensible as shoring up social security. There is no will to do so on the part of Congress. So this assumption is nonsense on its face.

[LS]

By conservative estimates, the 9/11 attack cost $1.3 trillion, or about three times Katrina. The next attack, due to the ripple psychological effects, would likely cost three times that much. If you throw in a “dirty bomb” in a major urban area, you can figure that a well-designed attack could easily cost several TIMES what the Iraq theater of the War on Terror has cost.

[rlmorel]

This is why Liberals do not understand the military and cannot be trusted to lead it, construct the missions or be responsible for funding it.

The Left looks at the military through a political prism ALWAYS. It is never evaluated on the intrinsic values and purposes of the military itself, but is always viewed in a calculus of votes won or lost, or money that could be taken away and used on things for “kids”.

It’s all about the children, everything from paying for transsexual operations for convicts to needle distribution programs.

Even the worst from right understand the intrinsic value and worth of our military and its personnel, excepting of course people like Hagel and so forth.

[AFreeBird]

“The $600 billion could have been used to shore up social security...

Typical idiot liberals. I don't care what Ivory Tower they reside in; you cannot "shore up" that which was built on a very faulty foundation.

And FDR's Ponzi scheme is about as shaky and faulty a foundation as you can get.