War Costs Soar by a Third; Total Could Top $1.4 Trillion

[slipslidingaway]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/war-costs-soar-.html


"It's not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan* -- way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006," says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service...

link to report
http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/RL33110.pdf

Meanwhile, Inside Defense reports that "top Pentagon budget and program officials have directed the military services to prepare spending proposals to finance Iraq and Afghanistan operations... through fiscal year 2009, which will span the last days of the Bush administration and the early months of the next administration."


Kucinich March 2007

"...“Which is it? Does the Congress want to stop the surge and keep the war going? Does it want to end the war by continuing to fund it? The people will not take kindly to Democrats saying one thing and doing another.

“If the Democratic Party had told the American people last October, ‘Vote Democratic and we’ll keep the war going through the end of President Bush’s term,’ there would still be a Republican majority in Congress. But the Democrats led the American people to believe that they would end the war.”

http://kucinich.house.gov/NEWS/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=61995

[Turbineguy]

1. Hmmm....

that means $12 per barrel of Iraq's reserves.

And before Bush took over oil was at $10 per barrel.

[slipslidingaway]

2. I take it we are moving in the right direction, for some anyway. n/t