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News :: Economy : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq : Regime |
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THE COST OF THE IRAQ WAR: $1,000,000,000,000+? |
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by Secrecy News
(No verified email address) |
12 Jan 2006
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Study by economists estimates total costs of war in Iraq to exceed a trillion dollars. |
Among the mistakes and misrepresentations that led to the U.S. war in
Iraq, one of the most shocking is the failure to correctly assess the
financial costs of the war.
Never mind the low comedy of AID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who
told Americans in 2003 that Iraqi reconstruction would cost taxpayers
no more than $1.7 billion (Secrecy News, 12/08/05).
Now it appears that even estimates in the hundreds of billions of
dollars may "underestimate the War's true costs to America by a wide
margin," according to a new study by economists Linda Bilmes and
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate.
The authors survey the direct and indirect costs of the Iraq war and
its aftermath, acknowledging the methodological difficulties
involved.
"Even taking a conservative approach, we have been surprised at how
large [the costs] are. We can state, with some degree of confidence,
that they exceed a trillion dollars," Bilmes and Stiglitz write.
"Would the American people have had a different attitude towards going
to war had they known the total cost? Would they have thought that
there might be better ways of advancing the cause of democracy or
even protecting themselves against an attack, that would cost but a
fraction of these amounts?"
"In the end, we may have decided that a trillion dollars spent on the
War in Iraq was better than all of these alternatives. But at least
it would have been a more informed decision than the one that was
made. And recognizing the risks, we might have conducted the War in
a manner different from the way we did," the authors conclude.
Their paper was reported in the Boston Globe on January 8.
See "The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years
After the Beginning of the Conflict" by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E.
Stiglitz, January 2006:
http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/Cost_of_War_in_Iraq.htm
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
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