Just to give people a little feeling of the difference between a million and a billion.
A million seconds is 11.5 days. A billion seconds is 32 years.
From your perspective, do you see an end to this? When do you estimate pulling out?
I don’t think the ire is directed at the cost per se, but the lack of planning before, during, and after the “hurricane” that led to this enormous cost. Not to mention the oft-quoted pre-war cost estimate not being in the same universe as the bill we’re getting today (i.e. “the oil will pay for reconstruction, don’t worry so much”).
Your analogy falls down in the sense that a hurricane is a natural disaster, taking place regardless of whether we do anything to prepare for it or not, and a war is a man-made disaster, in this case taking place in the time and manner of the Bush administration’s choosing.
This war is more like a used car than a hurricane. The salesperson told us it would run for 200,000 miles, get 40 mpg and our monthly payment would be $200/month. Instead, the monthly payment is $37,000, the doors fall off if you go faster than 15 mph and the whole thing catches on fire whenever you turn on the radio or hit the brakes. Worst of all, the salesperson stops by our house every few days to tell us what a great deal we got.
War costs for Iraq are deliberately not part of the the budget, be it the current FY06 budget or the projected FY07 budget. War costs are supplemental appropriations.
Source: Bloomberg - 16 Feb 2006
Pssst, the OP said wars, dumbass. 
I thought everyone was screaming that we were spending too little over there. I heard rumblings about insufficient funds for the troops and such…or was I imagining that?
Oh, all dem brown peoples are the same n’ways.
Yeah, imagine spending 5.9 billion dollars a month but not being able to afford body armour for the troops. I’d say that there’s a disconnect somewhere.
Er I think askeptic was responding to Clothahump’s conflation of the Iraq war with 9/11. The OP was about the Iraq war, but 'hump’s post was about 9/11.
If I have misjudged the level of meta-whoosh in your post, please consider this post either retracted, or the next level of whoosh. Or inverse whoosh. Or something.
I guess I am a dumbass, cause I don’t understand your post. I posted in response to humpys attempt to link the 9/11 terrorists to the invasion of Iraq. Color me confused.
I honestly don’t think anyone is as pissed about the amount of money as they are about the fact that it is going to a war they do not agree with. That money is not breaking the US, it would not have been spent on the cure for cancer otherwise either. I’m not happy with it. They did hint that Iraq would pay for for itself. I do understand that most of the money is probably goin to our military. I just can’t get worked up over it. They could send them over there with regular budget the military gets.I think that would cost more lives, so i say spend the money, and more if they need it.
I support our servicefolk. But whatever trust I might’ve had in the people/system who have deployed them and are spending money on them, is tenuous at best.
I recently listened to the January 27th, 2006 podcast of PBS’s “NOW” (full transcript, podcast archive mp3).
One of the guests on the show was Eugene Jarecki who directed and wrote the documentary Why We Fight, which won the Grand Jury prize and Sundance last year.
I have not seen the film yet, but found the interview very interesting.
The scary thing is that with posters like clothahump and martin hyde around I can’t be sure you are kidding.
Perhaps they are miffed at the nature of the spending. For example, the Coalition Provisional Authority flat lost $8 billion dollars. Pentagon Audits have found $1 billion in questionable costs and $442 million in unsupported costs on the part of Halliburton.
Yet, when it comes to the troops, it was initially decided that spending less than $240 million on body armor was not worth the cost. He has fairly consistently targeted military benefits for cuts, such as hazard pay, medical benefits, and survivors benefits.
Surely it cannot be that difficult for you to wrap your mind around the idea that one can be simultaneously concerned about the total amount of spending and the small proportion allocated to the health and well-being of the actual people fighting on our behalf.
so, if $30 per month is only 4%, then each person is actually paying more like $750 per month, be it in collected taxes or accumulated debt…
Thats a decent sized car payment, or for many, their mortgage!
We’ve also lost the opportunity to shore up a stable, civil society in Afghanistan by diverting our resources to Iraq. This is perhaps the main reason I disapprove of the war, although in the beginning I did think it was a positive force for change. Now, probably, both countries will revert to chaos and religious fundamentalism.
I have done the calculation on how much this war is costing me, on a percapita basis; it’s very depressing. Since I earn somewhat above the median salary, I’m sure it’s even worse if I were to figure in tax rates.
Even if the Iraq war actually had anything to do with preventing another 9-11, I still think that money could be better spent. As of the 2004 Census, the U.S. had 37 million people in poverty, including 13 million kids. 45 million people are without health insurance. How many Americans could be saved from poverty with $6 billion a month?
9-11, as horrible as it was, cost the lives of about 3000 people. And even if the Iraq war were somehow preventing another 9-11, you have to factor in the fact that it’s cost the lives of over 2200 American soldiers, with over 16,500 wounded (cite). Ultimately, it will probably end up killing more Americans than 9-11 did.
Sure, but they don’t be they want to kill ALL the Ay-rabs. They just want to kill the bad, fanatical ones.
However, since, at any moment, any Ay-rab can turn into one of them bad, fanatical ones, well, there’s really only one way to be sure.
-Joe
Let’s not forget that the war has already killed anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians as well, and people wonder why so much bad news gets reported about the Iraq War - it’s not all sunshine and light.