BURNING YOUR MONEY IN IRAQ
Bush to Request $70 Billion More

From the Washington Post courtesy of Eschaton:

The Bush administration intends to seek about $70 billion in emergency funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan early next year, pushing total war costs close to $225 billion since the invasion of Iraq early last year, Pentagon and congressional officials said yesterday.

And

Bush has said for months that he would make an additional request for the war next year, but the new estimates are the first glimpse of its magnitude. A $70 billion request would be considerably larger than lawmakers had anticipated earlier this year. After the president unexpectedly submitted an $87 billion request for the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts last year, many Republicans angrily expressed sticker shock and implored the administration not to surprise them again.

This request would come on top of $25 billion in war spending allocated by Congress for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The two bills combined suggest the cost of combat is escalating from the $65 billion spent by the military in 2004 and the $62.4 billion allocated in 2003, as U.S. troops face insurgencies that have proven far more lethal than expected at this point.

Obviously, the cost of the war in Iraq is going up to the tune of billions of dollars, and there's no end in sight. Perhaps, billions of dollars are difficult to imagine, which might diminish the sense of magnitude for what's going on here. I think this next excerpt puts it all in perspective:

Yale University economist William D. Nordhaus estimated that in inflation-adjusted terms, World War I cost just under $200 billion for the United States. The Vietnam War cost about $500 billion from 1964 to 1972, Nordhaus said. The cost of the Iraq war could reach nearly half that number by next fall, 2 1/2 years after it began.

Click here for the rest.

Yet another Iraq/Vietnam comparison, and this one is pretty concrete, in quantifiable terms, without any room for debate. The Vietnam War was the biggest single factor contributing to the stagflation and sluggish economy of the 1970s: even if you love war, by now you've got to be asking if this one is worth it.

We're committing economic suicide over there, really.

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