3 trillion, the true cost of the Iraq war

[forestal]

Imagine what we could do with 3 trillion dollars besides spend it on a war we didn't need to fight....How Bush and Company wrecked our economic future...

washingtonpost.com

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.
.....
But beyond this is the cost to the already sputtering U.S. economy. All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that's a conservative estimate.
President Bush tried to sell the American people on the idea that we could have a war with little or no economic sacrifice. Even after the United States went to war, Bush and Congress cut taxes, especially on the rich -- even though the United States already had a massive deficit. So the war had to be funded by more borrowing. By the end of the Bush administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the cumulative interest on the increased borrowing used to fund them, will have added about $1 trillion to the national debt.

.....
Closer to home, we could have funded countless schools to give children locked in the underclass a shot at decent lives. Or we could have tackled the massive problem of Social Security, which Bush began his second term hoping to address; for far, far less than the cost of the war, we could have ensured the solvency of Social Security for the next half a century or more.
....
Another worry: This war has been particularly hard on the economy because it led to a spike in oil prices. Before the 2003 invasion, oil cost less than $25 a barrel, and futures markets expected it to remain around there.
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[PsyOps]

Imagine what we could do with 3 trillion dollars besides spend it on a war we didn't need to fight....How Bush and Company wrecked our economic future...

Yeah unlike any other war or recession that this country has recovered from, this one is different. We'll never recover. We're doomed. Everyone stock up on your necessities and take cover into your shelters. The end is here. Thanks Bush for bringing on the end of the world.

Imagine what we could have done with 3 trillion dollars... if Clinton had spent 1/8 of that dealing with the growing al Qaeda problem under his watch we could have saved 3 trillion dollars. But things didn't pan out that way.

But I see your point Fauxrest... we should maintained the Clinton status quo which is do nothing. Let more innocent people die so we can save some money. I mean the all-important dollar outweighs our national security by miles. Good policy Fauxrest. And you call conservatives greedy?

 

[aps45819]

Imagine what we could do with 3 trillion dollars besides spend it on a war we didn't need to fight....

I know this one
We could build mosques

 

[cwo_ghwebb]

Imagine what we could do with 3 trillion dollars besides spend it on a war we didn't need to fight.

Let's see. We could have rebuilt the World Trade Center, we could have paid every Palestinian $100,000 to move into Syria, we could have given every deadbeat non-taxpayer $1,000, we could have hired 10 million more police officers to deal with illegal immigration and the terrorists murdering our citizens, as terrorism is a law enforcement problem according to Socialists, or we could have just dropped one big nuke on Iraq and turned it into a glass skateboard bowl. You're one of those intellectual Socialists who have the answer to every gray problem, forestool, you tell us.

 

[Lenny]

Imagine what we could do with 3 trillion dollars besides spend it on a war we didn't need to fight....How Bush and Company wrecked our economic future...

The nation would have done none of these. The funding to do these things would have driven the nation into the current projected deficits so nobody would have suggested, let alone approve any of the alternatives being cited by the BDS crowd. Argument ended.

 

[Baja28]

I know this one
We could build mosques

Let's see. We could have rebuilt the World Trade Center, we could have paid every Palestinian $100,000 to move into Syria, we could have given every deadbeat non-taxpayer $1,000, we could have hired 10 million more police officers to deal with illegal immigration and the terrorists murdering our citizens, as terrorism is a law enforcement problem according to Socialists, or we could have just dropped one big nuke on Iraq and turned it into a glass skateboard bowl. You're one of those intellectual Socialists who have the answer to every gray problem, forestool, you tell us.

While these are wonderful ideas (especially nuking them) lets not forget about installing foot washers and burka stores on every street corner.

 

[rockfish]

3 trillion, the true cost of Freedom

:Fixed: