soc.veterans

On Apr 6, 12:04=A0pm, "ElParedon" wrote:
> =A0100 bucks =A0a month that is how much you are paying for the Jew war
>
> The Iraq war, for $100 month
> By Bill Adair
> Published on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 01:46 p.m.
>
> SUMMARY: Sen. Barack Obama says the war costs each household about $100 pe=
r
> month. We do the math and find he's right.
>
> The cost of the Iraq war has often been expressed in billions or trillions=
,
> numbers so big and abstract they remind us of Carl Sagan's description of
> the universe ("billions and billions of stars.").
>
> The candidates have cited alternative uses for the war money, saying it
> would have been better spent on health coverage for the uninsured (Sen.
> Hillary Clinton) or on more school teachers (Sen. Barack Obama).
>
> In a speech on March 20, 2008, Obama took a different approach and
> emphasized the personal cost of the war.
>
> "When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you're paying a
> price for this war," he said in the speech in Charleston, W.Va.
>
> At $100 per month, the war cost to each U.S. household would be more than
> cable TV (average bill: $58), but less than a car payment (average bill:
> $400-500).
>
> We asked the Obama campaign about the source of the $100 figure and were
> told it came from The Three Trillion Dollar War, a new book by Joseph E.
> Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and Linda J. Bilmes, a former
> Commerce Department official from the Clinton administration who is now a
> professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
>
> The book says the monthly operating cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars =
is
> about $16-billion.
>
> "To think of it another way," the book says, "roughly every American
> household is spending $138 per month on the current operating costs of the=

> wars, with a little more than $100 per month going to Iraq alone."
>
> (Of course, Obama's simplified analysis does not reflect the variations in=

> income tax levels. And you don't have to write a check for the war each
> month. The war costs are included in government spending that is paid for =
by
> taxes.)
>
> There was no footnote for the $100 estimate, so we called Bilmes to ask ho=
w
> she had calculated it. She said they took the Bush administration's 2008
> request for war funding - $196-billion - and divided it by 12 to get a
> monthly cost. That works out to $16-billlion for both wars and about
> $12-billion just for the Iraq portion.
>
> Then, she and Stiglitz divided those figures by the number of U.S.
> households and came up with $138 for both wars and slightly more than $100=

> for Iraq alone, she said.
>
> We double-checked the authors' sources and math, and found they were right=
.
>
> Indeed, the Bush administration request for 2008 was $196-billion for both=

> wars, with $159-billion going to Iraq, according to a summary by the
> nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. A recent Census Bureau report
> said there were 116-million households. So that works out to about $140 pe=
r
> month for both wars and about $114 for Iraq alone. (Our numbers are slight=
ly
> higher than Bilmes and Stiglitz because we used the latest estimates from
> CRS and a newer and slighter higher count for households.)
>
> To verify the Bilmes and Stiglitz calculation, we checked with Steven
> Kosiak, vice president for budget studies with the Center for Strategic an=
d
> Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on defense
> issues. He said their methodology was correct and that the number "sounds
> about right."
>
> Bilmes, a Democrat who is neutral in the presidental race, said Obama coul=
d
> have used an even higher figure if he had included other war costs that ar=
en't
> in the Pentagon's $196-billion tab. These include disability payments, the=

> cost of replacing war-fighting equipment and interest on the borrowed mone=
y.
>
> By using the figure he did, Obama "really was being conservative on this,"=

> Bilmes said. "He's not overstating it in any way."
>
> And so we find Obama is right about the war's monthly cost. We find his
> claim to be True.

This promises to be a more entertaining election. Meantime, I suggest
that
a person be very careful with any type of stock market investment.

ted

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