The actual cost of this war.

[lendaddy]

I picked up an interesting little tidbit last night. The war has currently cost around $200 billion. This is a big number, I agree. However to say was it worth it to get rid of Sadaam etc.. assumes that it was free to contain him. The number budgeted to contain Sadaam over the next ten years was $300 billion! So I agree the actual cost of the war is an unknown right now, but the difference in cost is not very large, and atleast this way he is gone. At the end of the ten years we don't have to worry about him lobbbing a nuke etc... Another interesting point was that Sadaam was DEEPLY in debt and in danger of losing his debt service. This would have given us one very desperate dictator, no longer a problem now. Interesting points to be sure, and maybe they heal some wounds of those who only care how much this has cost? Pay some now or alot later.

[Overpaid Slacker]

I'd read that the out-of-pocket cost just to enforce the no-fly zones over 10 years had been in excess of $30 billion. I wouldn't bet my lunch money on that figure, but it sounds reasonable and evidences the fact that the pre-war Iraqi situation was far from costless.
JP

[joeclarke]

Ha ha - you guys crack me up...

hold it - this is the joke thread isn't it?

[lendaddy]

Such refined wisdom Joe! Perhaps you could breakdown the costs of containment for us lemmings?

[motion]

Gee, that works out to $8.2 million PER DAY to contain Saddam. I'm sure even his numerous palaces didn't cost that kind of coin. I've heard of gov't waste, but this takes the cake!

Source, please.

[lendaddy]

"The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a private research group, estimates that $50 billion of the annual $270 billion in U.S. defense spending goes toward maintaining the Gulf deployment and keeping the Iraqi president in line. "

[lendaddy]

Richard Adams
Friday March 28, 2003
The Guardian

" Weighing up the pros and cons of the conflict with Iraq has been a difficult business. Thankfully, some economists from the University of Chicago - Milton Friedman's alma mater - have sat down and done the sums. And the answer is: 1.498. That apparently means that war is a good thing. It's really very simple: it's the ratio of (V<+>T-W)/V<+>S - where V<+>T is per capita welfare at the outset of transition and ... er ... anyway, it's entirely straightforward. Economists Steven Davis, Kevin Murphy and Robert Topel, in War Versus Containment: Impact on Iraqi Economic Welfare, calculate that containing Saddam Hussein would cost the US at least $380bn and as much as $630bn, compared with a conservative estimate of $125bn for war and reconstruction. They also estimate that Iraq's per capita output would be much higher under an alternative regime. "War raises Iraqi welfare by nearly 50% in the baseline case," say the authors, finally casting aside the stereotype of economics as a bloodless science. "

[lendaddy]

ESSAY: OUR PRESENCE IN IRAQ
By William Goldcamp. Published January 2, 2004
Goldcamp is a diplomatic historian and a former intelligence analyst.

"Disingenuous and facile people always point to war as the ultimate evil. This position is intellectually bankrupt and is one of the main reasons why tyranny repeatedly reconstitutes itself to threaten liberty. A new University of Chicago study challenges the left’s and the religious pacifists’ naive contention that containing Saddam’s ambitions would have obviated the need to go to war. The study concluded containment would have cost $380 billion, as opposed to $200 billion to drive Saddam from power and rebuild Iraq. It also estimated Saddam would have continued to brutalize his people and would have murdered as many as 200,000 more Iraqis."

[lendaddy]

Now I understand that my sources are not as reliable as "Joe's opinion" but I'll throw them out there anyway

[kach22i]

Originally posted by lendaddy
Now I understand that my sources are not as reliable as "Joe's opinion" but I'll throw them out there anyway

I am keeping this quote for the next time someone ask me to stop supporting my (so called liberal) statments with articles.

I suppose I could just post biased unsupported opinion, but then I would be just like one of Rush's minions.

You all realize that if little George had half the brains of his father he would of got the rest of the world to pay for it, right?

[lendaddy]

You can focus on the added editorial content in each article snippet I posted or the study done at the University of Chicago. Posting an op-ed opinion is not quite the same. Keep that in mind.

[island911]

Interesting. . .though I'm a bit skeptical about the $380 billion estimate.

I would think containment cost would be established by the previous 12 years of enforcing "No-Fly Zones" and "Food for Oil" programs. btw, do we have #'s on how many $'s in kick-backs went to the French and Russians, on that?

Mostly, I'm always skeptical about "studies" and "projections" . .. they are usually a tool of the MMQLT (Monday Morning Quarterbacking Leftist Tool). For sure problems in Iraq were to cost US regardless of whether we got Right on the problem, or Left it to fester.

[nostatic]

the $200B figure for the "cost of the war and rebuilding" strikes me as at least an order of magnitude too low.

And note that the one course talks of "Milton Friedman's alma mater", like that means it must be good work. I'm sure you can find economists with different figures than the ones given above. And allocating the entire defense budget for mideast deployment "for Saddam" seems specious to me. There is a hell of a lot more going on there than just babbysitting senør Lice-head.

[island911]

Originally posted by nostatic
.. . . There is a hell of a lot more going on there than just babbysitting senør Lice-head.

I think we're talking bout what it would have cost to contain Sadaam when he was "running" Iraq.

heh-heh, yeah, $380 Billion to jail the guy. . . heh-heh, you lib's . . .only kinda thinking that might be a bit high for a jail cell. Hey, he's got to have cable TV and a flat-panel, right?

[techweenie]

Talk about disingenuous.

When you spend $200 billion that you DO NOT HAVE, that's called borrowing. Ever since the Reagan administration, this fiction about spending money we don't have costing no more than 'face value' has been swallowed by the gullible press, people bad at math, and Republican syncophants.

With debt service, the ultimate cost of the Iraq war may well exceed $600 billion.

But it's incredibly naive to think 800+ American lives are worth much less than that, and they were expended for what? Containment of a toothless petty tyrant only a nervous nellie would consider a threat to the US? And then there's that other cost -- the cost of the goodwill and respect the US enjoyed before killing 10,000 Iraqis and imprisoning an equal number.

[kach22i]

Originally posted by techweenie
Talk about disingenuous.

When you spend $200 billion that you DO NOT HAVE, that's called borrowing. Ever since the Reagan administration, this fiction about spending money we don't have costing no more than 'face value' has been swallowed by the gullible press, people bad at math, and Republican syncophants.

With debt service, the ultimate cost of the Iraq war may well exceed $600 billion.

But it's incredibly naive to think 800+ American lives are worth much less than that, and they were expended for what? Containment of a toothless petty tyrant only a nervous nellie would consider a threat to the US? And then there's that other cost -- the cost of the goodwill and respect the US enjoyed before killing 10,000 Iraqis and imprisoning an equal number.

Good point.

[nostatic]

Originally posted by island911
I think we're talking bout what it would have cost to contain Sadaam when he was "running" Iraq.

heh-heh, yeah, $380 Billion to jail the guy. . . heh-heh, you lib's . . .only kinda thinking that might be a bit high for a jail cell. Hey, he's got to have cable TV and a flat-panel, right?

No, I was referring to when he was in power. I cannot believe that the entire mideast deployment was focussed on Iraq. What about the rest of the region?

Sorry, I think the economists are playing fast and loose with the numbers. Getting a figure for mideast deployment is easy, parsing that to allocate to different "problems" is a whole 'nother thing.

[island911]

Originally posted by techweenie
Talk about disingenuous.
. . But it's incredibly naive to think 800+ American lives are worth much less than that, and they were expended for what?

How much are they worth, answer-man?

FWIW: There are about 42,815 highway deaths and 2.92 million crash-related injuries per year. (per; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)

Gee, 42,815 highway deaths, and they were expended for what?

[lendaddy]

It's really simple enough, post a study claiming otherwise. It's not like this is some obscure subject. My point was simply that this is more of an investment in the future than money down the ****ter.

[Overpaid Slacker]

Techweenie -
Do you have info that all moneys spent in Iraq are borrowings? The federal government does have coffers out of which they spend money -- taxes must certainly exist in your world, regarless of the color of the sky therein.

Your characterization of Hussein is a model of disingenuity. 5th largest standing army in the world, proven history of use of biological and chemical weapons, strong ties to terrorists, etc. I disagree in a cost of goodwill (it wasn't "worth" much to us in a dollar sense, esp. as we foot the bill for much of the do-gooding in the world) and the benefits to a democratic Iraq in that region and the impact in the world to our efforts (Syria, Libya, even Iran) can't be ignored, though they're difficult to quantify.

JP