War Glance
President-elect Barack Obama's administration needs to monitor war spending much more closely than the current White House has, according to a new study that criticizes President Bush's approach to funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- a bill that is projected to approach nearly $1 trillion next year.
Even with declining troop numbers in Iraq, the direct price tag of the two wars could grow as high as $1.7 trillion by 2018, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reported last week. The defense think tank's figure does not include potentially hundreds of billions more in indirect economic and social costs, such as higher oil prices and lost wages.
The war in Iraq alone has already cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than every other U.S. war except World War II, the CSBA found.
TVNL Comment: The war was started in order to loot this nation. The same people that privatized much of the military also profit from the private military complex of corporations. They weakened the military and made them dependent on private companies. Then they started the wars. It was always about the money for some of them.
The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that the $687 billion spent so far on Iraq has cost the US more than every conflict aside from World War II. With the $184 billion in Afghanistan, the two main conflicts of the war on terror have proved to be 50 percent more expensive than Vietnam.
A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.
