Unhappy Birthday: The Iraq War Turns 5

Be angry. Be very angry.

Nearly four thousand American troops dead. At least 90,000 Iraqi civilians killed, perhaps many, many more than that, since estimates vary widely.

When you consider them as statistics, it's just numbers. Every time you read, see or hear the story of the toll the war has taken on individual lives and you muliply that pain and suffering by gthe number of people affected, it's almost impossible to wrap your mind around the truly horrendous consequnces of George W. Bush's war of choice.

And for what? The argument to justify the war has changed many times since we disocuvered the first justification, the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would use them to attack us, turned out to be a false.

Anyone who tries to make the case that we're safer now as a result of the war really needs to prove their point because the opposite appears to be the reality of the situation. Turns out most people don't a superpower that starts wars without any provocation. That anger helps fuel the religious fanatacism that leads people to become suicide bombers.

I don't feel safer. Do you?

Then there's the money.

Three trillion dollars, according to Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz's estimate of what the war will cost when you add it all up.

Why does the Bush administration say it's only $500 billion? Stiglitz counts expenses that the White House conceals.

A professor at Columbia University, Stiglitz was the chief economist for the World Bank and, before that, the chief of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. His estimates are in a new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War."

He says his figures are conservative. Among the most startling:

$600 billion that Congress has appropriated so far
$520 billion to bring home troops and equipment
$590 billion in medical and disability payments to veterans
$280 billion to restore a depleted military
$615 billion in interest for a war financed entirely by borrowing
$370 billion as the war's impact on individuals including the loss of lifetime earnings by disabled veterans, interruptions in careers for reservists and their families.


When the war began, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld scoffed when Lawrence Lindsey, and advisor to President Bush, estimated the cost of the war at $200 billion. The Secretary of Defense called the estimate “baloney.“ Rummy’s deputy Paul Wolfowitz said Iraqi oil money could pay for reconstruction after the war.

Stiglitz’s figures assume American troops will leave Iraq in a few years. Imagine the cost of John McCain is right and the meter keeps running for another 100 years.