WHAT HAPPENED?

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WHAT HAPPENED TO MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

 

 

 

Published on Friday, April 28, 2006 by the

Independent / UK

Iraq War Set To Be More Expensive Than Vietnam

by Rupert Cornwell

 

The Iraq war has already cost the United States

$320bn (£180bn), according to an authoritative new

report, and even if a troop withdrawal begins

this year, the conflict is set to be more expensive

in real terms than the Vietnam War, a generation

ago.

 

The estimate, circulated this week by the

non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), can

only increase unease over the US presence in Iraq,

whose direct costs now run at some $6bn a month,

or $200m a day, with no end in sight.

 

The Bush administration has refused to provide

any specific overall figure for the war's cost. But

the Senate is set to approve another emergency

spending bill in May, meaning that Iraq will have

consumed $101bn in fiscal 2006 alone, almost

double the $51bn of 2003, the year of the invasion

itself - and all at a time when the federal budget

deficit is running at near record levels.

 

But these figures pale beside what lies in store,

the CRS says in its analysis. The Bush

administration is desperate to announce a reduction in the

130,000-strong US force before November's

mid-term elections, where public disillusion with the

war threatens disaster for the Republicans.

 

However, even if everything goes relatively

smoothly, costs until a phase-out is complete could

top $370bn. This would make the Iraq conflict, now

into its fourth year, more expensive financially

than the Vietnam War, which lasted eight years.

Vietnam claimed 58,000 American lives, far more

than the almost 2,400 lost in Iraq thus far. But in

today's dollars it cost " only " $549bn, much less

than the $690bn for Iraq, and a projected

combined $811bn bill for the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan.

 

It is a far cry from the weeks before the war,

when a White House official was rapped on the

knuckles for suggesting the cost might be between

$100bn and $200bn, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence

Secretary, was touting " a number that's somewhere

under $50bn " .

 

Paul Wolfowitz, now president of the World Bank

but then Mr Rumsfeld's deputy at the Pentagon,

even theorised before Congress that the

post-invasion period might pay for itself as Iraq's oil

revenues soared.

 

The financial analysis by the Congressional

Research Service lists various " key war cost

questions " and " major unknowns " , such as future troop

levels, but its financial conclusions are restrained

compared with other non-official figures.

 

Scott Wallsten of the American Enterprise

Institute, a conservative think-tank, has estimated an

overall cost of $500bn thus far, with as much

again possible. Most, he says, will be paid for by

the US (unlike the 1990-91 Gulf War, which the US

fought almost for free, thanks to contributions

from Saudi Arabia, Japan and other allies).

 

In January, a study by Joseph Stiglitz, the

Columbia University economist and former Nobel Prize

winner, and the Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes

reckoned the conflict could ultimately cost $2

trillion, if all factors are taken into account. These

include the long-term healthcare costs for the

16,000 US soldiers already wounded in the conflict,

and other indirect or hidden costs such as the

rise in the price of oil, the need to finance

larger budget deficits, higher recruiting costs and

losses to the economy caused by the wounded.

 

The Pentagon has treated such outside estimates

with disdain. But it resolutely refused to give a

detailed picture of its own. Some experts

suggest, however, that the Pentagon may have

deliberately inflated its financial needs now, fearing that

as the war becomes ever more unpopular, Congress

will grow less willing to provide funds in the

future.

 

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

 

 

 

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