The Cost of War

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In an earlier thread a rightwinger wrote:

"Like I always say.........and its fucking fascinating on some level..........far left people never consider two important questions when discussing ANYTHING:
1) COST
2) AS COMPARED TO WHAT?
In the real world though, a huge majority of people DO ask those questions."

Just another example of hypocritical Republicans not following their own advice.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2NDh6I2H3E"]Consider...[/ame]☜Link

Costs Of War Linger 100 Years After Combat Ends: AP Analysis

MIKE BAKER
03/19/13

OLYMPIA, Wash. — If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.

An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans – 148 years after the conflict ended.

At the 10 year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war's long-lasting financial toll.

"When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost," said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII-veteran father's disability benefits helped feed their family.

Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator and veteran who co-chaired President Barack Obama's deficit committee in 2010, said government leaders working to limit the national debt should make sure that survivors of veterans need the money they are receiving.

"Without question, I would affluence-test all of those people," Simpson said.

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And now-----and now that the cost of war has become inconvenient, Republicans like Alan Simpson want to break the contract our veterans agreed to when they joined the military service of our country.

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[Truthmatters]

Ike warned us of the people who would make a profit off the death of our bravest

 

[Truthmatters]

the really weird thing the right HATES Ike.

they dont know why though

 

[Londoner]

Big Government Conservatism - Hiding the costs of war

Joseph Stiglitz and several members of his research team spent a couple years trying to track down the costs of the Iraq War, which have only grown since their original inquiry.

They discovered a Government rats nest of strategically hidden expenses. They discovered a "corporate entitlement" culture of corruptly mismanaged no-bid contracts where cronies of the Bush administration were raping the taxpayer with over-charges. They also discovered that at least 8 billion dollar was lost. (Jeeze, "I thought government was noble and competent", says the rightwing voter who trusts Republican government when it comes to war spending)

After years of using the freedom of information act to gather information, the Stiglitz team came up with a conservative estimate of 3 trillion dollars in 2008. The projected expenses involved with concluding the war and paying for post-war basing and veteran care is conservatively estimated at just over 10 trillion.

Prior to the creation of a think tank/talk radio/media bubble in order to influence the opinions of the rightwing voter, we could count on Conservative voters to hold government accountable for this kind of waste. Unfortunately, the rightwing voter no longer has access to any information which details the spending and waste on his side of the aisle. As a result, the nation is woefully vulnerable to being bankrupted by a rightwing machine which has the luxury of being able to hide its waste.