Just as the Bush administration was caught lying to us about WMDs and Saddam Hussein's fictional connection to 9/11, it's now been caught hiding the staggering true cost in dollars of this wholly unnecessary war. And that cost is - are you sitting down? - $3 trillion-$5 trillion. With a "T."
Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government, have set out these calculations in a new book, "The $3 Trillion War." Unlike the Bush sdministration, they add in the costs of taking care of wounded and disabled veterans, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments for a war fought largely on credit. In fact, this is the first time since the Revolutionary War that we've gone to war on borrowed money; 40 percent of the money for this war was borrowed from China and Middle Eastern countries.
This accounting wasn't easy: the administration tried to hide many of the costs, both financial and human. The economists had to sue under the Freedom of Information Act to learn the number of American soldiers injured in accidents or illnesses. The administration set up barriers to returning veterans' getting the care they need to recover from their injuries in order to obfuscate the real toll the war is taking.
To put it in perspective, your family's share of the cost of the Iraq war is $30,000. Consider it a down payment on a 100-year mortgage you've acquired without signing on any dotted line.
