[NYTr] The staggering cost of the war in Iraq - BOB HERBERT

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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Now and Forever

By BOB HERBERT

Most of the time we pretend it'" s not there: The staggering financial
cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a
rocket headed toward the moon and beyond.

Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
estimated that the true cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1
trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion.

Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.

A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic
Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant
change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast
majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.

Priorities dont get much more twisted. A country that cant find the
money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the
city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is
flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a
failed and endless war.

The No. 1 reason that the war in Iraq should end, said Senator Charles
Schumer, chairman of the joint committee, is the loss of life that is
occurring without accomplishing any of the goals that even President
Bush put forward.

But right below that, he said, is the need to stop squandering
incredible amounts of money that could be put to better use  helping to
make peoples lives better  here at home. That colossal and continuing
waste, he said, should cause anxiety in anyone who cares about the
future of this country. I know it causes me anxiety.

President Bushs formal funding requests for Iraq have already exceeded
$600 billion. In addition to that, the report offers estimates of the
wars hidden costs from its beginning to 2017: the long-term costs of
treating the wounded and disabled; interest and other costs associated
with borrowing to finance the war; the money needed to repair or replace
military equipment; the increased costs of military recruitment and
retention; and such difficult to gauge but very real costs as the loss
of productivity from those who have been killed or wounded.

What matters more than the precision of these estimates (Republicans are
not happy with them) is the undeniable fact that the costs associated
with the Iraq war are huge and carry with them enormous societal
consequences.

Far from seeking a halt to the war, the Bush administration has been
considering a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq that would last
for many years, if not decades. There has been very little public
discussion and no thorough analysis of the overall implications of such
a policy.

What is indisputable, however, is that everything associated with the
Iraq war has cost vastly more than the administrations absurdly sunny
forecasts. The direct appropriations are already roughly 10 times the
amount of the administrations original estimates of the entire cost of
the war.

Senator Schumer and other Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee have
been trying (not very successfully, so far) to get other policy makers
and the public at large to focus on the sheer insanity of pumping
hundreds of billions  if not trillions  of public dollars into a failed
venture with no end even remotely in view.

There are myriad better ways to use the many millions of dollars that
the U.S. spends on Iraq every day. Two important long-term investments
that come to mind  and that would put large numbers of Americans to
work  are the development of a serious strategy for achieving energy
independence over the next several years and the creation of a
large-scale program for rebuilding the aging American infrastructure.

To get to those, or any number of other important initiatives, the
countrys leaders will have to somehow get past their bizarre reluctance
to end this debilitating war.

I asked Senator Schumer how soon he thought U.S. forces should leave
Iraq. He said: You start withdrawing in three months and be out in a
year. In my view, there would be a small force left  10,000 or 15,000
to deal with any Al Qaeda camps that might be set up. But thats it.

His words were echoed in another context by Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia
Democrat (and also a member of the Joint Economic Committee), who said
on Meet the Press on Sunday that its not in the strategic interest of
the United States to have a long-term military presence in Iraq.

Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq
are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on to
fork over tax money to continue paying for the war.

Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?