NY Times' Bob Herbert: Iraq & Afghanistan wars could cost $3.5 Trillion -- calls it "madness"

[HamdenRice]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/opinion/04herbert.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Now and Forever

By BOB HERBERT
Published: December 4, 2007

Most of the time we pretend it’s not there: The staggering financial cost of the war in Iraq, which continues to soar, unchecked, like a rocket headed toward the moon and beyond.

Early last year, the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimated that the “true” cost of the war would ultimately exceed $1 trillion, and maybe even $2 trillion.

Incredibly, that estimate may have been low.

A report prepared for the Democratic majority on the Joint Economic Committee of the House and Senate warns that without a significant change of course in Iraq, the long-term cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could head into the vicinity of $3.5 trillion. The vast majority of those expenses would be for Iraq.

Priorities don’t get much more twisted. A country that can’t find the money to provide health coverage for its children, or to rebuild the city of New Orleans, or to create a first-class public school system, is flushing whole generations worth of cash into the bottomless pit of a failed and endless war.

...

Youngsters who were just starting high school when the U.S. invaded Iraq are in college now. Their children, yet unborn, will be called on to fork over tax money to continue paying for the war.

Seriously. How long do we want this madness to last?

<end quote>

[bigscott]

1. well I guess

that depends on who we elect to replace the insane monkey we now have in the white house. Remind me which ones have promised to get us out of there immediately??:hide:

[HamdenRice]

3. That's why I can't vote for her

on principle. I can't vote for anyone who would continue the financial destruction of the republic -- let alone who would continue the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe.

After all the strategizing, eventually I have to vote on principle.

[Romulox]

2. I seem to recall that the NY Times' yellow journalism was INSTRUMENTAL in leading us to war

in the first place... :eyes:

[HamdenRice]

4. Pretty sure Herbert has always been against it

It's an editorial by their most liberal columnist. But he is also reporting news -- the Democratic committee staff's new estimate.

[robbedvoter]

6. Herbert is NOT NYT. Neither is Krugman and a few good people who happen

to be published there. I loathe NYT for their role in the war, elections etc - but I don't make individual journalists responsible for the paper's policy

[Romulox]

8. And yet there is the NYTime's imprimatur, right there in the thread topic..nt

[HamdenRice]

10. Columnists like Herbert are in a half-way position between reporters and opinion writers

Herbert in particular actually reports in his columns. That means his factual statements are fact checked, so yes there is some NY Times imprimatur on what he writes.

I doubt Maureen Dowd has used a fact checker in years. You don't have to when you mostly play word games with people's names.

[Romulox]

9. self-delete. dupe. nt

[robbedvoter]

5. That last paragraph blew my mind!

[HamdenRice]

7. Yup, it has now gone on longer than World War II

A complete morass.