BuzzFlash Reviews
The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (Hardcover)
By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes
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From an online reviewer:
This book not only describes the cost of the Iraq War long term, but explains how billions of dollars were wasted in Iraq due to the total corruption of the Bush administration, starting with Bush refusing to allow open bidding on the contracts to rebuild Iraq. Those contract then went to his or the Vice President's cronies. In addition the Bush administration makes no mention of the long term costs of the injured soldiers returning from Iraq. Bush has also lied to the American people about the number of injured soldiers and after being caught on the government's own web site, they took the site down.
From Norton Books, the publisher:
The true cost of the Iraq War is $3 trillion�and counting�rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House.
Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. This sobering study by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes casts a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans�for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer�s money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.
About the Authors:
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of Making Globalization Work and Globalization and Its Discontents. Linda J. Bilmes, a professor of public finance at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, is a former assistant secretary for management and budget in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Another online reviewer:
Three trillion dollars for the war in Iraq is an incredible amount, almost beyond comprehension, and certainly far beyond the figures provided by the Bush administration. Yet this total is made both credible and comprehensible through the documentation of Joseph Sitlitz (2001 Nobel Prize-winner in economics, and Professor at Columbia) and Linda Bilmes, Harvard University expert on public policy and finance.
Compelling alternative uses for the money are numerous. For example, we could have put Social Security on sound financial footing for a fraction of that cost, and avoided the nearly 4,000 American deaths (plus $500,000/death benefits) and 100,000 estimated Iraqi deaths - plus an untold number of seriously wounded and their long-term disability and health costs. (Stiglitz found that 40% of Gulf War troops were declared disabled, and that was only a one month war; he sees Pentagon estimates of Gulf War II wounded and disabled as grossly understated, and documents that conclusion. Another key point - peak expenditures for WWII veterans did not occur until 1993; thus this war will affect spending decades into the future.) Alternatively, America's trillion dollar+ infrastructure needs could be met with only half that expense.
Other costs include skyrocketing re-enlistment bonuses (up to $150,000 - their alternative is personal safety or much higher-paid private security work), the extra costs of using reserve and guard troops, up to $1,222/day for private security guards to replace servicemen paid less than one-sixth that, lost billions to reconstruct Iraq and spent in non-competitive bidding, and massive equipment replacement costs.
Then there are the opportunity costs associated with spending the money overseas, with no return to the American economy, increased pressure on the dollar, and the likely increased cost of oil. Finally, what about the interest costs of financing this war with debt, and our increased reliance on foreign nations holding that debt?
Supposedly this war is being fought to promote democracy. Yet, as Sitlitz points out, it is being mostly sold and funded through hiding the costs from the public. Continuing our presence in Iraq may, with interest, raise the total to $6-7 trillion. Meanwhile, bin Laden roams free, and even more Islamicists hate us.
"The Three Trillion Dollar War" is MUST reading.
Excerpt from "The Three Trillion Dollar War":
The major factors driving up war costs go beyond the number of troops deployed or the operating pace or "optempo" of the war. Since 2004, the average number of military personnel deployed to the region in a given period has grown by 15 percent�but the costs have rocketed by 130 percent. Similarly, the intensity of operations is estimated to have risen by 65 percent during the period�half the rate of cost increases.
Three major factors are behind these ballooning costs. One, of course, is the rising cost of personnel�both U.S. servicemen and women and military contractors. Even though the average number of service members deployed has risen only slightly, the cost per troop has increased considerably. Recruitment, combat pay, hardship benefits, and reenlistment bonuses have all been jacked up (reenlistment bonuses can reach $150,000). The Army has relied to an unprecedented extent on Reservists and the National Guard, who must be paid a full salary plus combat pay and other benefits once on active duty rather than a stipend for one weekend per month. While we allocate the costs of Reserves and National Guard between Iraq and Afghanistan largely to the extent that they were deployed and injured in the different theaters, in a sense, the vast majority of these costs should be attributed to Iraq. Had we not gone to war in Iraq, we would have been able to rely on our standing military to a much larger extent. Just the 82,800 to 142,000 active duty troops stationed in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2005, had they been assigned to Afghanistan, would have obviated most of the need to call up the Reserves and National Guard. If we include the thousands of troops that helped support them, the need would have been even less. On the benefit side, there may be a debate on the extent to which the Iraq war's diversion of attention from Afghanistan has contributed to the failures there; but on the cost side, there is no question: It was the Iraq war, following on the Afghanistan war, which put the stresses on the military that have driven up costs in so many ways.
The growing use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan doing everything from cooking and cleaning to servicing weapons systems and protecting U.S. diplomats has increased operational expenses far more than if we had relied solely on the Army. A 2006 survey by the Department of Defense's Central Command showed that the United States is employing more than 100,000 private contractors; this number represents a tenfold increase over the use of contractors during the Gulf War in 1991. Given our failure to increase the size of the military, the United States cannot operate without them. For the most part, these people work side by side with U.S. troops and share the risks and hardship. An estimated 1,000 contractors have been killed since 2003.
The invasion of Iraq opened up new opportunities for private military security firms. The State Department alone spent more than $4 billion on security guards in 2007�up from $1 billion three years ago. Blackwater Security got an initial toehold in 2003 with a $27 million no-bid contract to guard L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority (the U.S. occupational authority in Baghdad). That contract was expanded to $100 million a year later. By 2007, it held a $1.2 billion contract for Iraq and employed 845 private security contractors.
Excerpts from an NPR interview with the authors about "The Three Trillion Dollar War" can be found here
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