US Wasted Billions in Iraq with Few Results: Inspector

asianobserve

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Iraq, Afghan Wars to Cost US Up to $6 Trillion: Study
By Agence France-Presse on Monday, April 1st, 2013


The Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost the United States between $4-6 trillion in the long term, constraining the government's budget for decades to come, a study said.

Harvard University scholar Linda Bilmes concluded that the United States will face increasing costs to care for an estimated 2.5 million veterans, and to pay down debt incurred by borrowing to pay for the wars.

"As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives," said the report released Thursday.

"In short, there will be no peace dividend, and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades," it said.

Bilmes, who served in government under former president Bill Clinton, calculated that the United States has already spent nearly $2 trillion directly for the two wars launched by former president George W. Bush.

But Bilmes' study said the biggest cost would be medical care and disability benefits, saying that more than half of the 1.56 million troops discharged from service have already been granted benefits for life.

Bilmes, who called the numbers unprecedented, said that costs will climb over decades. She wrote that the peak year for disability payments over World War I, which ended in 1918, was 1969 as veterans became elderly.

"The magnitude of future expenditures will be even higher for the current conflicts, which have been characterized by much higher survival rates, more generous benefits and new, expensive medical treatments," she said.

Bilmes also factored in debt, finding no precedent for a time when the United States went to war while lowering taxes, with the possible exception of the Revolutionary War when US colonies borrowed from France.

The study also looked at social costs, with families burdened with the effects of the deaths or injuries of service members.

The United States is expected to maintain a limited military presence in Afghanistan after 2014, when President Barack Obama plans to withdraw combat troops first sent after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Opinion polls show that most of the US public has grown weary of the longest US war, in Afghanistan, and is critical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq a decade ago.

Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary under Bush, said before the invasion that the Iraq war would cost around $50 billion and called higher estimates "baloney." Now he's the baloney! :rofl:


Read more: Iraq, Afghan wars to cost US up to $6 trillion: study | Defense & Security News at DefenceTalk
 

W.G.Ewald

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Was the Iraq Invasion Worthwhile? Ask an Iraqi - Bloomberg

"Today, in 2013 -- a decade later -- it's not fashionable to suggest that the American invasion of Iraq served any useful purpose," Filkins continued. "But what are we to make of Iraqis like Al-Musawi? Or of torture chambers like Al Hakemiya? Where do we place them in our memories? And, more important, how should they shape our judgment of the war we waged?"

His suggestion: "Ask the Iraqis -- that is, if anyone, in this moment of American navel-gazing, can be bothered to do so."

I took Filkins's charge to heart, and asked another graduate of Saddam's torture chambers, a man named Barham Salih, what he thought of the invasion, 10 years on.

Today, Salih is the chairman of the board of the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, which provides a liberal education in a place not previously known for such a phenomenon. In recent years, Salih has served as both the deputy prime minister of Iraq and as prime minister of the Kurdish regional government. He was in the camp of people who argued that Saddam's decision to commit genocide against Iraqi Kurds (sometimes with chemical weapons) in the late 1980s made his removal a moral imperative.

I asked him if he thought the invasion was worth it.

"From the perspective of the Kurdish people -- and I dare say the majority of the Iraqi people -- it was worth it," he said. "War is never a good option, but given our history and the brutality of Saddam's regime, it may have been the only other option to end the genocidal campaign waged by Saddam against the Kurds and other communities in Iraq."

Here is where his answer became a lament. "I must admit, however, that 10 years on, Iraq's transition is, to say the least, characterized by unrealized expectations, both for Iraqis and for our American liberators. Iraq is not the friendly democracy that the U.S. had hoped for, and it is far from the secure, inclusive democracy that Iraqis deserved and aspired to."
 

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Media Slow To Show WikiLeaks Justified Iraq War | Human Events

While the media have been quick to run with WikiLeaks' U.S. State Department cable releases to undermine Washington's efforts to effect stability in unstable parts of the world, it is slow, if not silent, in giving credit where credit is due. Although other credible sources confirmed it before WikiLeaks did, in receiving similar disinterested responses from the media, it should be clear now that President Bush's concerns about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program were well-founded.
 

W.G.Ewald

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@asianobserve depends on emoticons and YouTube for what he probably believes are debating points. Using words to refute words must be quite beyond him. Another anonymous false-flagger.
 
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W.G.Ewald

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^^
Again @asianobserve has nothing to add to discussion using words of his own, just YouTube clips out of context and emoticons. The true mark of the Site Pest. He has no more importance here than a pimple on the asshole of DFI. Meanwhile he thinks the US can do no wrong since Obama was elected.
 
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The Last Stand

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@W.G.Ewald sir,

America was dying thanks to the Great depressison in 29. It became filthy rich when WW2 ended by supplying this and that to USSR and UK with Lend-Lease.

WTH did you do FDR. :dude:
 
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W.G.Ewald

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@W.G.Ewald sir,

America was dying thanks to the Great depressison in 29. It became filthy rich when WW2 ended by supplying this and that to USSR and UK with Lend-Lease.

WTH did you do FDR. :dude:
USA did not really enrich itself from WWII, but the economy expanded afterwards partially because of need for housing of veterans and their families.
 
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The Last Stand

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USA did not really enrich itself from WWII, but the economy expanded afterwards partially because of need for housing of veterans and their families.
I have a damned WW2 history book which clearly states that Lend-Lease policy repaired and enhanced USA economy. It doesn't give reasons. FDR is not well known name in India sadly. But anyone who knows him respects.

:salute: to all the brave men, women and animals who fought for their nation in the world's greatest war.
 

W.G.Ewald

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I have a damned WW2 history book which clearly states that Lend-Lease policy repaired and enhanced USA economy. It doesn't give reasons. FDR is not well known name in India sadly. But anyone who knows him respects.
The statement implies Lend-Lease beneficiaries repaid Uncle Sam. Do you think they did?
 

W.G.Ewald

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Lend-Lease - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Repayment

There was no charge for the Lend Lease aid delivered during the war, but the Americans did expect the return of some durable goods such as ships. Congress had not authorized the gift of supplies after the war, so the administration charged for them, usually at a 90% discount. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on 2 September 1945. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post war period. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of £1.075 billion for the Lend Lease portion of the post-war loans. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest.[31] The final payment of $83.3 million (£42.5 million), due on 31 December 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years), was made on 29 December 2006 (the last working day of the year). After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, formally thanked the U.S. for its wartime support.
To keep this somewhat on topic:

The War For Oil Myth | FrontPage Magazine

Now that the tenth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom has arrived, the American left has taken another opportunity to revive the trope that going to war in that nation "was all about oil." The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald is one such revivalist. In a column on Monday he's magnanimous enough to concede that saying the war in Iraq was fought strictly for oil is an "oversimplification." Yet just as quickly, he can't contain himself. "But the fact that oil is a major factor in every Western military action in the Middle East is so self-evident that it's astonishing that it's even considered debatable, let alone some fringe and edgy idea," he contends. The war for oil mantra may be self-evident to Greenwald and his fellow travelers, but the facts say otherwise.

If oil were a major factor for prosecuting war in Iraq, it stands to reason the United States would be getting substantial amounts of it. It may come as a shock to Greenwald as well as a number of other Americans, but with regard to importing oil, the overwhelming percentage of our imported oil does not come from the Middle East. Canada and Latin America provide the United States with 34.7 percent of our imported oil. Africa provides another 10.3 percent. The entire Persian Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia at 8.1 percent, provides us with a total of 12.9 percent of our imported oil.

As recently as December 2012, Iraq provided the United States with approximately 14.3 million barrels of oil out of a total of about 298 million barrels imported, or 4.8 percent of our total imports. And as this chart indicates, we were importing the highest amount of oil from Iraq before we went to war to oust Saddam Hussein.
 

The Last Stand

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The statement implies Lend-Lease beneficiaries repaid Uncle Sam. Do you think they did?
I heard that UK never repaid the debt fully. I searched for info now and reacted. :wtf:

The author of the book will be dead in 24 hours. I promise. :megusta:

Sorry for off topic posts.
 

W.G.Ewald

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@W.G.Ewald sir,

America was dying thanks to the Great depressison in 29. It became filthy rich when WW2 ended by supplying this and that to USSR and UK with Lend-Lease.

WTH did you do FDR. :dude:
Author: Soviet agents subverted US in 1930s | The Daily Caller

Syndicated columnist Diana West says the ultimate conclusion of her new book shocked even her.

"Americans have been betrayed "¦ by our leaders going back to FDR's administration in the 1930s because we were penetrated by Soviet agents to such an extent that our policies and, indeed I argue, our character as a nation was subverted," she explained in an interview with The Daily Caller's Ginni Thomas about her book, "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character."

"I don't believe we won World War II," West added. "I believe that we were actually carrying out Soviet strategy due to this penetration."
 
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