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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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November 2nd,
2007 - CNN: Price of Iraq War 10 Times Pre-War Predictions |
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CNN: Price of Iraq War 10 Times
Pre-War Predictions By David Edwards & Greg Wasserstrom Raw Story November 2, 2007 When President Bush's
emergency supplemental funding request is granted by Congress in the coming
weeks, the cost of the Iraq War will reach ten times its original projected
cost of $50-60 billion, CNN reports. At what will soon be a total
tab of $576 billion, the Iraq war is second in cost only to World War II.
According to CNN's report, every minute troops are deployed in Iraq, the
American public pays $200,000 to keep them there. Since the money is not
allocated by Congress as part of the regular budget, there is little
oversight of how it is spent and Billions of dollars remain unaccounted for
in Iraq as the costs continue to mount. "There's even funding
that the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office
identify that they don't have any idea where the funding went," Says
Travis Sharp of the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Center. "They
don't know if it went for weapons systems, they don't know if it was
operating costs in Iraq and Afghanistan." Additionally, the current conflict
is the first in American history not to be paid for in real time. President
Roosevelt raised funds for the Second World War by selling war bonds and
Americans paid higher taxes throughout the Vietnam era. The Bush
administration, however, is well known for its propensity to cut taxes and
increase spending. "Americans have not
paid higher taxes to pay for this war, in fact we've had a tax cut, nor have
we seen a reduction in domestic spending" Says Robert Hormats of Goldman
Sachs, author of The Price of Liberty, a new book examining the history of
American military funding. "We've in effected shifted the cost of this
war to future generations." Though 65% of the American
public now opposes United States involvement in Iraq according to CNN's poll,
Congress still shows no signs of significantly reducing its military or
domestic spending and President Bush has stated time and again his opposition
to raising taxes. External link: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_Price_of_Iraq_war_10_1102.html |