This video from the USA is called Bill Moyers’ ‘True Cost of the Iraq War’.
By Eric Margolis in the USA:
THE SECOND MOST EXPENSIVE WAR IN AMERICAN HISTORYAccording to the British Conservative Daily Telegraph, the Iraq war costs British taxpayers more than World War II.`A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money,’ famously quipped US Senator Everett Dirksen back in the 1960’s.
The US government has just estimated that President George Bush’s occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and his so-called `war on terror,’ will cost at least $690 billion by the end of next year. That’s more than the total cost to America of World War I, the Korean War, or Vietnam, and second only to the $2 trillion cost of World War II (in current dollars).
This means that by 2008, Bush’s wars in the Muslim World will have cost each American man, woman and child $2,300.
The $690 billion poured into the bottomless hole of the faux war on terrorism does not include the estimated $100 billion direct cost of the 9/11 attacks, the urgent need to replace $66 billion of US military equipment worn out or destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan, billions in lifetime care for seriously injured soldiers, $125 billion in backlogged veteran’s claims, and untold billions spent in secret CIA programs in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ironically, half of the money spent on these wars is being borrowed from former American enemies, Communist China and Japan. Half the current American deficit is being tied directly to the war on terrorism. After six years, the Bush/Cheney Administration cannot even define what it means by victory in its wars in the Muslim World.
Defeat looms large in Iraq; Afghanistan is headed that way; and the US National intelligence Estimate just reported that al-Qaida is actually stronger than ever.
