Freedom isn’t free
By DougJ, Head of Infidelity May 8th, 2010
The Center For American progress tallies the cost of the Iraq war:
- Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
- Coalition deaths: 4,712
- U.S. deaths: 4,394
- U.S. wounded: 31,768
- U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.25 percent
- Iraqi Security Force deaths: At least 9,451
- Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,163
- Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542
- Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
- Internally displaced persons: 2.6 million
- Refugees: 1.9 million
Financial costs
- Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $748.2 billion
- Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion
I would like to see even one of the liberal hawks who supported the Iraq war defend all of this and/or apologize. And no, wanking in Slate about how “no one could have predicted” doesn’t cut it.
Posted in Good News For Conservatives, hoocoodanode
But, if the commie libtards hadn’t have passed Universal HC, Iraq coulda been paid for, or at least the IOW to the Chinese woulda been less. also, too.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
Ugh. You’re trying to depress me aren’t you? I suggest a tax for every single person who voted for Bush both times. Or either time for that matter.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
BTW, DougJ, I hereby usurp the comment section of this thread for the diabolical and dastardly purpose of setting up a covert blog within a blog wrapped in an enema.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Those are low-end estimates aren’t they? I can see why they would use those, to preemptively fend off complaints/attacks about their sources, but I think most non-US estimates of civilian deaths are five times that or more.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I thought we all agreed that anyone who used NOCHP in a non-sarcastic manner got whacked in the goolies with a hammer.
Maybe that was just a lovely dream I had.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
That’s a lot less than I thought, actually (money). I thought it was costing us that per year, and that’s why the debt went so wildly to Hell.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
the tree of freedom is gonna grow big and tall and hard in Iraq, one of these days, muthafukkas !
/asshole
May 8th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
@Yutsano: It’s certainly more fun to bash Joe and Mika, but it’s the grotesque clubbiness demonstrated in the post below that led to Iraq. The ridiculous has tragic consequences.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
this needs the ‘hoocoodanod’ tag
when you let slip the dogs of war there are some things you can be sure will follow. Huge expenses. Brutality. Innocent victims. PTSD. War crimes.
Its why the rush to war should never be allowed to go unchallenged. Anyone who read the European press prior to our invasion knew for a fact the case was false. But even if you didn’t know that you still should have paused for a moment and added all this to the cost of war.
What we got instead was the blithe “woo-woo” fist pump from that vapid boy george. There should be special chairs in hell for the cheerleaders of this fiasco.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
@Uloborus: The debt went to hell because not only did Georgie want his wars he also wanted to give his corporate masters a tax cut so they could steal even more wealth. Add onto that a totally unfunded massive entitlement and yeah it’s no wonder the budget went all meschugnah. But as long as the Chinese are willing to underwrite it all hey spend that credit card baby!
May 8th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
This is why liberals can’t win.
The best data we have suggests that there were 600,000 Iraqi deaths as of 2006, but citing that would make the Right scream. So let’s compromise between reality and insanity. In 20 years maybe we’ll compromise again and say there were only 50,000 deaths.
Eventually Iraq will be the best war ever! Nobody died!
May 8th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
@Yutsano:
I made the mistake of voting for bush both times. by 2005 i had changed my view. Of course, I was suffering from Evangelical Fever, so there is that. Still, I’d suggest a tax on everyone who voted for the authority to send troops – which would include a lot of dems. There was a lot of crazy in 2002-2003.
May 8th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Cue some right winger asking us if we’d rather Saddam Hussein were still in power.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Excellent article at the link. I encourage all to read the whole thing.
I was researching spinal cord injuries after my son’s friends accident and several of the stories were from Iraq War veterans. Guys with Christopher Reeve injuries from sniper fire.
And it just makes me sick. Awful.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
@arguingwithsignposts: I know there was a ton of crazy. I saw the crazy, even from quarters I didn’t expect. I almost lost friends because I refused to be a cheerleader for Georgie’s war. I was even reluctant on Afghanistan, even though I thought we were just going to pull out quickly (shows you how much I know!) and things would settle down afterwards. This is why if Obama agrees to raise taxes at any point in the future (although I can guarantee it won’t be until 2013) I will readily agree because inasmuch as I didn’t vote in the fucker I still have the stain of our collective sin on my soul. The least we should do is pay for the goddamn thing.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
the civilian deaths are off by an order of magnitude. The study by Johns Hopkins makes it clear that the excess number of civilian deaths is a million or more.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
@Carl: If you read through the PDF, and follow it to the source for that number (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/), you’ll see that it is the number of documented Iraqi civilian deaths, based on media reports of individual attacks and so forth. As such, it should be taken as an absolute bare minimum; the real number is undoubtedly much higher.
The much higher numbers that you are quoting were estimates, derived from things like demographic surveys. I’m not an expert in statistical demography, so I can’t speak as to the reliability of these estimates. It just needs to be noted that you’re comparing two numbers that may look the same, but actually aren’t measuring the same thing.
dms
May 8th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Hey, but at least we secured a steady supply of oil so we wouldn’t have to drill offshore, right? No?
May 8th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
@frankdawg:
Yeah. I’m not a ‘war is never justified’ person, but I do think you’re a fool if you don’t go into a war knowing there will be massive death and horror, no matter what, and you’re unleashing Hell. You’d fuck all better be doing it to prevent an even worse Hell, which is a high bar.
Of course, Georgy and Cheney didn’t even try to minimize the cost, human or monetary, and they did it for… er, pride, apparently.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
That slate piece is amazing. Hell, even the onion was calling this shit in 2003.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Maybe the Times Square ticker that shows the National Debt could be changed to show the costs of our current wars instead.
Or these figures could run at the bottom of our TV screens like the Dow Jones. Let’s get it right out in front.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
It was well worth the money cuz Saddam helped plan 9/11 and had weapons of mass destruction pointed at us. It was self defense!
May 8th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
@Carl: No, the reason why liberals can’t win is that you mistakenly think anyone in this country gives a damn about those people, whether it be 100,000 or 600,000.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
@Nick: Hell I’m not convinced a plurality in this country even give a shit about our own damn soldiers much less brown furriners.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think the $748B is the separately budgeted costs of the war. General defense costs – we’ve been maintaining an overly large military just so we can quickly engage in foolish ventures like the Iraq War – and future interest on what was borrowed aren’t counted. Total costs are likely in the $2-3T range.
And then there are opportunity costs. If we’re going to spend $750B, why not do it on something like a national high-speed rail system instead of hauling the money to a foreign country and setting it on fire?
May 8th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
@licensed to kill time:
That’s a great idea.
Put up a ticker in the heart of every US city. And some more for the commuter traffic.
How much does one of those things cost?
May 8th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
If Iraq’s prewar population was 20 million, that would be about 18% of the population was displaced or fled the country. If that happened in this country, that would be 54 million people.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
@PeakVT: SociaIist.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Who gives a shit. I mean, it’s not like the children of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bill Kristol, Bill OReally, Bobo Brooks, Thomas Friedman, Krauthammer, Joe Lieberprick, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarbo, Peter King, Rudy Giuliani, Saxby Chambliss, Mitch McConnell, John Kerry, Hillary and Bill Clinton, Zell Miller, Jeb Bush, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Peggers Nooners, Kkkkkarl Rove, Haley Barbour, Ed Gillespie, Brit Hume, Mike Wallace, the Kagans, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage were sacrificed for this wonderful war. It’s just the kids of the little people who were sacrificed and, really, why does that matter? It’s not like they actually contribute to society like Bill Kristol does.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
But its probably easier to acquire an assault rifle in Iraq now, which as we all know, is the best measure of freedom.
PS. That Onion piece is awesome. Its almost as if the Weekly Standard, RedState, and every other wingnut outfit read that and thought, “hey, that counterpoint guy really argued his point well! We should do that.”
May 8th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
That’s staggering. And who knows what the actual cost to wounded veterans and their families will actually be, in actual medical treatment and expense, lost opportunity and broken lives.
And then there’s the Iraqi people. Who are people, no matter what some would tell you.
I like the ticker idea too.
Metrics. Wasn’t that one of W’s favorite terms?
May 8th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
@jharp:
We could use all those silly freeway signs that essentially tell you nothing most of the time. Include a “your share of this cost is X” for some reality bites.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Looks like these folks were prescient:
The $3 Trillion War
May 8th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
@mai naem:
You just hit on why the right was actually uncomfortable with Michael Moore’s Farenheit 911.
For me, the revelation wasn’t the conspiracytalk of Bush and Bin Laden family ties.
It was when Moore took a bullhorn to Capitol Hill and tried to find Congresscritters and their kids serving in the active military.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
I assume the post title was intended as irony, as Saddam’s Iraq never posed any threat whatsoever to our freedom.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
@Rick Taylor:
not a right-winger, but, frankly, yes.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
@Nick, @Yutsano:
I wish I could say you guys were wrong, but this is a country where torture polls quite well. Doug was right the other day: a Franco type dictatorship wouldn’t bother most Americans.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
@Yutsano: I maintain that if we’d had a draft (and a fair one at that) – or any economic penalty whatsoever that wasn’t cooked off the books, we’d never have gotten into either af/pak or iraq.
Looking back now, our little glass buildings weren’t worth all that. Not at all.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Gawd, what a great illustration on that article! Hapless George and The Man in The Black Hat (well, it should have had the black hat).
May 8th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
@licensed to kill time:
Let’s do it.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
Make no mistake, a draft would have changed the balance a “bit”, but not that much. It would have made those opposed more pissed about it, but that would have been a bonus for those who support the war.
A better idea is to make war paygo, where you have to pay for war via wealth and investment taxation. That would make them think twice.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
@jharp:
What we need is a genius hacker (maybe Garcia from NCIS) who can tap into the nonexistent centralized database for freeway signs and change them all. We could call them Red Alerts for how far into the red we are, or maybe COW Alerts (Cost Of War).
Or maybe those ‘Miss Me Yet?’ billboards could use a little numerical graffiti…
May 8th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
12
May 8th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
OT but Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah just lost his party’s nomination
May 8th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
“but john edwards had to vote for the war cuz he’s from a red state!”
/firebagger
May 8th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
@lemma: HA!
Will the beltway media wring their hands and clutch their pearls and denounce the base as extremist like they did after Loserman lost his primary.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I wonder if Bennett will run as an indie.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Ot
Today’s twisted irony overload
edit- then she went boom from a methane bubble
May 8th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
@mike kay:
both are good questions but he doesn’t strike me as the independent type – he voted for TARP and worked with Wyden on health care – so he’s a commie I guess
May 8th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
U.S. wounded 31,768 doesn’t begin to describe the carnage. Modern body armor is much more effective than in earlier wars, so many of those 31,000 “wounded” American troops actually suffer from chronic untreatable brain damage.
See the MIT Technology Review article Brain Trauma in Iraq: Thousands of U.S. soldiers have survived powerful explosions in Iraq. Many are returning home with brain injuries that could result in long-term disabilities.
IEDs went off and the concussion turned their brains into hamburger. These are young people, in their twenties, who experience blinding headaches 16 hours a day, can’t control their shaking hands enough to tie their shoes, experience double vision and severe cognitive deficits that leave them unable to do simple things like read a textbook or drive a car.
MIT Technology Review article “Brain Trauma In Iraq,” op. cit.
We’re going to pay for these young people whose lives have been destroyed to fund their disability care for the next 60 or 70 years. That’s the cost of the innocent-sounding “31,768 wounded.”
On top of all that, Pentagon Continues to Use “Personality Disorder” Discharges to Cheat Veterans out of Benefits.
Just imagine that for a second. Imagine you’re twenty two years old, the side of your head got caved in when an IED went off twenty yards away from you, you’ve lost the sight in your right eye due to shrapnel, you get daily migraine headaches so bad you can’t stand or walk, the brain trauma has left you unable to read or do simple addition or subtraction, and then the Pentagon tells your VA doc to give you a Section 8 discharge because you’ve got a psychiatric “personality disorder,” not physical brain injuries the Pentagon would have to pay for.
It’s enough to make you projectile-vomit.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
@mclaren:
I have a business associate whose son suffered exactly the injury you describe.
And you’re right, it is sickening.
May 8th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Dammit! I no longer give a shit if I’ve been selected to receive a $1,000 WalMart gift card. Is there no relief? I actually had to mute a work computer today because of this. Jesus Christ on a stick, Cole, is there any way you can tell those people no?
May 8th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
@mclaren: dude, if you feel so strongly about the war, why did you support invasion cheerleader johnny boy Edwards?
May 8th, 2010 at 6:01 pm
@licensed to kill time: I’m with you on this and the billboard idea. People need to see what the real cost has been. It’s breaking my heart.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
reminds me of the campfire/beans scene from “Blazing Saddles”
May 8th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Quote from a reader’s reply to a reader’s reply at Sully’s:
Well, then it makes “Race” exactly as real as “Racism”. Welcome to the point.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
@Mark S.: Yes, but ONLY if the low life white trash (any one making less than a proper sum, say under $250,000), blacks and browns (no matter their incomes) were properly held in their place – then the real elite (over +$1,000,000/year) would hold the real power.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
@Mike Kay:
Because I was a fvcking idiot.
People make mistakes. I’ve made plenty.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
A heavy price to pay for weapons that weren’t there and a threat that did not exist.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Being a math/stats guy and liking the wonky side of policy I have a lot of respect for CAP. This piece though? I have a huge problem however with anyone that thinks that you can have a war that dispaces 4.5M citizens but “only” kills 100,000 citizens. That’s arguing that there are 45 displacements for every death. Simply, Can. Not. Work.
Like a lot of other folks here I think the civilian death totals are a lot closer to 1M than 100K. If the CAP is washing the blood from the war to be taken more seriously in official Washington there may be some value to a lie here. But let’s all be clear at least in the RBC: there is no way there were only 100000 civilian deaths in Iraq. And we, as Americans, even those who were aggressively against the war bear a moral responsibility for each of those deaths.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
It is time for a Constitutional amendment that any war or “police action” must be paid for on a pay/go basis and that taxes must be raised to do it. Really.
If fuckers want to go to war fine, but let them know what it costs because they have to write the check now.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:19 pm
@middlewest:
Fixt.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
The oil in the Gulf:
Excerpted from comment on nola dot com:
I gather that we don’t know how to clean up the oil that is on the surface of the Gulf and we don’t know how much oil is underneath the surface. Great.
Also, the first trial of the cofferdam failed.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-.....tai_1.html
I guess we also don’t know how to turn off the flow of oil.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
@Svensker:No, not a general tax but a special tax only on capital gains, dividends, any income above $250,000/year and a mandatory 5% tax on total income (NOT profits) for all corporations. Then there would NEVER be a war again. When poor kids die to pay for our wars to make money for the real elete, then assholes like ass licker bush &bloody hands cheney will always occur.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
@mclaren: thanks for the honesty and candor.
I swear, i was so angered seeing one anti-war protester after another line-up behind an invasion cheerleader. His populist tune was fine, but that could never make amends for the 100,000 deaths.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Megan McArdle, via Alicublog:
May 8th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Forget Iraq. Deaths and injuries out of sight, out of mind…According to the right, costs—both financial and human—don’t matter and never will be acknowledged. That makes us weak.
Now the mantra is Iran…And, somehow this invasion will have no costs, neither to us nor to Iranians…Because, bombs don’t kill. And, we are strong.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
@DBrown:
Yeah, I could see that, but I think a general tax as well so all the little bozos who think it’s just swell to go blow up furners have to cut back on the trip to Disney or settle for a used SUV in order to pay for their fair share of the carnage. That might impress them. And 20,000,000 teabaggers might actually get something accomplished.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
@Belvoir:
Dear McMegan, please go introduce yourself to asiangrrl and her rusty pitchfork of doom. kthxbai
May 8th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
I don’ t think that’s a very high price to pay for stopping a small increase in the top marginal rate of income tax, and sparing the nation the ravages of gay marriage, at least for a few more years.
You have to look at Iraq as not so much a war, as a very expensive campaign commercial.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:37 pm
I have mixed feelings about Michael Moore in general, but I loved that scene in Fahrenheit when he accosted the various congresspeople on the Capitol steps to ask if they were sending their kids to fight in Iraq.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
@Annie:
Great. Invasion by Pakled. We are so fucked.
/Trekkie
@eemom: Whatever else one thinks of Michael Moore, his cartoon explaining the history of the love of guns in the US is sheer genius.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
@Yutsano:
The Iraqi insurgents used their crimson force shield. They are smart. We are not strong.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
@mike kay: Bennet can’t run in the general. Utah has a sore loser law.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
@Rick Taylor: My answer to that question is invariably “yes”.
Let’s see would I rather have:
a. a war with the statistics above, plus a country that has become a hotbed for Islamic extremism and one that is still nearly certain to fall into sectarian violence once we finally leave, or
b. a tinpot dictator still in power who, while a real prick, kept his bootheel on the sectarian bullshit and also served to keep Iran from getting overly ambitious?
May 8th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
I’ve yet to see the ad. Install a flash blocker.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
I know this is way OT, but as tomorrow is Mother’s day and we no haz open thread yet:
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/201.....ay/?hpt=C2
A different perspective on tomorrow.
@eemom: BTW saw this and thought of you right away. You’ll get why as soon as you read it.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
@Ailuridae: Doesn’t matter. If 100K deaths don’t matter to them, then 1M won’t either.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Annie, Yutsano, & Mclaren: Love the Pakled references.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
@PeakVT:
A “sore loser law”? That’s hilarious.
I hope Arizona doesn’t have one, because I sooooo want McCain to get his ass kicked by that freakazoid, pull a Lieberman/Crist, and get his ass kicked again in November, preferably by the Democrat.
Hey, a girl can dream.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
@eemom: I don’t think they do. However I can’t see Walnuts going this route unless he knows he can win. Regardless of the hero stories, the man has taken the easy way out his whole damn life.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
Quiet, you could wake the beast from it’s current slumber and all hell break loose.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
@eemom: Sore-loser law. Sorry, your dream can’t come true.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
@Yutsano:
I disagree; I could definitely see Walnuts making an independent bid. One, he’d never accept that he couldn’t win. Two, he fucking hates Haynesworth. Those two assholes have a lot of history.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Did you lot see that Hannity thinks the Iraqis should pick up the tab for their own invasion? “Every single solitary penny.” (C&L link). What is this, an preemptive-invade your way back to solvency solution for the US economy or just his usual wacked mutterings?
May 8th, 2010 at 7:29 pm
@PeakVT:
Maybe mine can, then. I’d love to see him lose the primary and spitefully start siding with the Democrats as a way of getting back at the wingnuts who didn’t vote for him. It would be an appropriately selfish end to a selfish career.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Reading that Slate article made me want to punch those fuckers in the face, starting with Jacob Weisberg and his self-congratulatory smug assholery.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
@Mark S.:
Two assholes fighting to the death. This could be the Southwestern equivalent of the Iran-Iraq war.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
@scav:
I think the 2 million Iraqi refugees should be the first to pay…
If they had the money to flee and now live in abandoned buildings, tents, and multiple family apartments, they must be saving tons…We should after their huge bank accounts…
May 8th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
@arguingwithsignposts:
LOL….My Dean walked into my office just as I was offered the gift certificate. Fortunately, I was able to change my screen and immediately announce how many new students were registered for the fall…
May 8th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
Some of the costs of a different war.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Sighs…
I wish every fucking pundit under the age of 40 who supported the war had enlisted (yes, enlisted, no OCS allowed) in the Army or Marines, had to quit their nice fucking comfortable cushy writing/pundit gig, and had to spend a nice big chunk of their 20s/30s making multiple deployments overseas and living the oh so wonderful life of a lower enlisted grunt.
And I’m pretty generous and openminded, so I mean every conservative and misguided liberal hawk.
And yeah, it annoys the fuck out of me that I, of all people, had the courage of my misguided convictions way back those misguided days and actually did just that.
May 8th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
@scav: Well, didn’t Bush say that Iraq would be able to pay for the reconstruction from their oil revenues…
May 8th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
RE the whole TBI thing:
I was fortunate enough to have been in the Army from 2002-2007 without having been deployed overseas, and it breaks my heart to think of all those vets suffering from the effects of TBI, coming home to a shitty economy, people who don’t understand, being fucked out of benefits because of discharges, etc. Especially when I see so many 20/30 somethings who were never in the military go on with their lives, going to work, doing the family thing, living normal lives.
There is such a fucking disconnect going on here, and I’m afraid its probably going to take a while for people to realize that there’s a large number of young people whose lives are fucked because of an inadequate health care system.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Well said. There is a disconnect. While we barely recognize the deaths of US military personnel, soldiers with severe injuries and trauma are invisible…And, what also is invisible is the amount of love and care—often at a huge cost—of their families.
May 8th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
One of my favorite quotes from Kent Conrad in 2003:
Ain’t no party like an amnesiac Tea Party!
May 8th, 2010 at 8:34 pm
Repig domestic policy: Drill Baby Drill
Repig foreign policy: Kill Baby Kill
The Iraq fustercluck is what happens when you let proudly-ignorant, arrogant ideologues ‘govern’ by selfish whims and magical thinking.
The mystery is why so many dumbasses keep giving them the keys to the car when they keep wrecking it.
May 8th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Freedom may not be free, but the cost of stupidity and ignorance can be a lot higher….
May 8th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
@Mike G: Repig health policy: ill baby ill.
(blame the damn sans serif type).
May 8th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
Bush and Cheney should be hung, Nuremberg style, and their ill-gotten millions confiscated to help pay for the war.
May 8th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
If freedom isn’t free why are we giving it away?
May 9th, 2010 at 12:32 am
What does that list have to do with freedom?
May 9th, 2010 at 12:40 am
I support sacrificing them Aztec Style.
Then the parents can be next.
May 9th, 2010 at 1:58 am
How do you even put a price tag on the destruction of neighborhoods by ethnic cleansing in Baghdad?
May 9th, 2010 at 7:38 am
Two Things:
1.What exactly does invading Iraq have to do with our “Freedom?”
2.
Expect to hear these same, lame mea culpas from all the HCR “hawks” in three years.
May 9th, 2010 at 10:01 am
They seem to have seriously lowballed the numbers. There have been two reputable statistical estimates that put the human carnage more in the 500,000-1,000,000 range. And Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel winning economist, has estimated the monetary cost at more like $3 trillion.
Does the Center care to explain the gigantic, glaring discrepancies?
May 9th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
over at the original this line still has what appears to be a typo “Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 96,037 and 104,7542.” surely that second number should read 1,047,542
May 9th, 2010 at 3:48 pm