Cost of Iraq war will surpass Vietnam's by year's end

[proud2BlibKansan]

Reporting from Washington -- The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday.

If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, the cost of the war will rise by $87 billion for 2009, including a previous supplement approved during the Bush administration.

Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam War cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4.1 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year.

In Vietnam, U.S. forces at their peak had up to three times as many troops at any one time as in Iraq and suffered 58,000 deaths, more than 13 times as many as have died in Iraq. There are two broad reasons for the added expense of the Iraq war: people and equipment.

more . . . http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-iraq-vietnam11-2009apr11,0,738307.story

[babylonsister]

1. From 2005:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0901-02.htm

Iraq War Costs Now Exceed Vietnam's
by Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON - The U.S. Treasury is paying out more each month to sustain the war in Iraq than it did during the Vietnam War, according to a new report that calls the ongoing conflict "the most expensive military effort in the last 60 years".

If the $204 billion appropriated for the war so far had been used instead for social programs...it could have paid for the health care of the more than 46 million citizens ... the hiring of 3.5 million elementary school teachers, or the construction of affordable housing units for nearly two million people.

The 84-page report, "The Iraq Quagmire: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War and the Case for Bringing the Troops Home", says that the total bill for the war in Iraq has come to some 204 billion dollars, or an average of 727 dollars per U.S. citizen, not counting an additional 45 billion dollars which is currently pending before Congress.

The report, which comes as Congress braces itself for the multi-billion costs of cleaning up after the unprecedented devastation inflicted this week on New Orleans and the broader Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina, also does not include at least another 25-billion-dollar request that the Pentagon is believed to be preparing to sustain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next year.

Released by two think tanks, the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus, that have strongly opposed the Iraq war, the new study is their third since mid-2004 to attempt a comprehensive accounting of the human, social, and international -- as well as financial -- costs of the war on the U.S. and Iraq.

more...

[Wapsie B]

2. We don't worry about that stuff!

There's no price tag on freedom for the Iraqi people! Obama's earmarks! Earmarks! Tax and spend!

:sarcasm:

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. You are going to have to explain what Obama's earmarks have to do with this

[Wapsie B]

4. Spending in general.

People screaming about government spending now were silent about costs incurred when we went into Iraq.