In-depth with Stiglitz on 'true' costs

While President Bush has claimed the wars has nothing to do with the economy Joseph Stiglitz, one of the country’s leading economists, has just published a book that puts an estimated price tag on the war in Iraq, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. There was just a longish post here about this yesterday, but this morning Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes stopped by Democracy Now, which has free audio and video of the important interview on this study -- which has some surprises involving facts and assumptions.

Democracy Now also hosted Jeremy Scahill who had a lot to say on the Clinton & Obama plans for Iraq for Years to Come. While not planning a 100-year war, the Democrats plan on a long stay at high cost. By the way, Democracy Now interviews eventually show up at Archive.org as MPEG-2 and MP4.

Update: KQED Forum also interviewed Stiglitz and Bilmes on March 5 (mp3). It has different details, which can put things in a different perspective, though simply noting that 3 trillion is 3,000 billion doesn't illustrate the true cost. For example, funding poor children's health care in the US -- vetoed by the President because it was too expensive -- would cost the same as only a few days of the Iraq war. Even with the high cost of this war, medical care for veterans is extremely poor and bureaucratic, and "troops" are required to repay signup bonuses if they are disabled before their tour of duty is finished. The Department of Defense considers the disability as a broken contract!

Update 2: Rolling Stone has a new analysis of "the surge" which is just an attempt to prop up a distastrous moral, financial, and strategic failure with bodies and cash pay-offs.

Crooks & Liars notes a recent congressional hearing on war costs, and Matt Yglesias of The Atlantic adds, “Few people seem to appreciate it, but it’s quite literally true that al-Qaeda’s strategy is to cripple the U.S. economy by dragging us into quagmires abroad [the same strategy the U.S. employed to bankrupt the Soviets], Osama bin Laden himself has said this, and it’s the only strategy that makes sense. A smallish number of people with no base of resources can’t possibly defeat us unless we shoot ourselves in the foot repeatedly as Bush and McCain propose.”