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You can't run a war on a shoestring
NY Post ^ | March 28, 2011 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 03/29/2011 2:49:10 AM PDT by Scanian

A Tomahawk missile costs $1.4 million. If you don't know that, you haven't paid attention to the debate over the Libya War.

The war is America's first conflict initiated against the backdrop of $1 trillion deficits, and as such practically every strike is subject to the accountant's bean-counting. Our first fusillade of 160 cruise missiles, we are told, cost hundreds of millions of dollars alone. Even Indiana's Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican establishmentarian and internationalist of long standing, argues the cost of the war is too damn high. "Who has really budgeted for Libya at all?" he asks.

Yes, by all means, the next time we're faced with an international crisis requiring a hair-trigger response -- saving the rebellion once it was reeling back toward its base in Benghazi required action in a matter of days -- let's first have a Senate Budget Committee hearing and a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

There are compelling reasons to oppose the Libya War. Cost isn't one of them. That we are now to consider every act of US foreign policy merely as a line item in the federal budget is a sign of fiscal monomania and superpower degeneracy, not to mention a failure in basic math.

If the United States goes bankrupt, it won't be because of Libya, unless we add all eligible Libyans to our Social Security and Medicare rolls, and even then -- at a population of fewer than 7 million -- it will only augment current trends. America's long-term debt is driven by ever-expanding entitlements. Already, this fiscal year, mandatory spending alone is projected to essentially match all federal revenues. We could eliminate the defense budget altogether, at about $700 billion, and still only cut the deficit in half.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: costs; defense; libya; tomahawkmissile

1 posted on 03/29/2011 2:49:16 AM PDT by Scanian
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To: Scanian

Of course he did...


2 posted on 03/29/2011 2:52:36 AM PDT by allmost
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To: Scanian

Interesting how in the General Dynamics years the Cruise Missiles cost something over 900k per. Then when the bastards at GD were allowed to rape the company by breaking it up, (thank you William Anders, you pr*ck of a golden parachute boy) that part was sold to Hughes who claimed they had a ‘paperless factory’ system for Cruise Missiles, and they DIDN’T then the price rocketed up. How convenient for the taxpayer.

[And YES, I was there - I KNOW, and as a taxpayer I am pissed off.]


3 posted on 03/29/2011 3:02:52 AM PDT by gemoftheocean (...geez, this all seems so straight forward and logical to me...)
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To: gemoftheocean

Yabbut - the $$ for the THawks we have used was spent long ago. In that sense, they are ‘free’ IF WE DON’T REPLACE THEM. I have always said that weapons like the THawk are way too sanitary, way too easy for douchebags like His Oneness and the Hildebeast to use.

And, I was there too, on the Requirements side of the Pentagonal Edifice. As I remember, in the GD days they were originally built by hand. But again, so were airplanes .....

We ought NOT to replace them. War is supposed to be a dirty, nasty, hateful thing, not a sanitary exercise. If we replace them, make the g*****n warheads nukes so the political bastards will HAVE to think twice about using them.

Just sayin’.


4 posted on 03/29/2011 3:38:59 AM PDT by tgusa (Investment plan: blued steel, brass, lead, copper)
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