In the past, I’ve seen Senator Biden and Senator Obama talk about the cost of the war in Iraq as being $8bil a month, $10bil a month, $12bil a month, back to $10bil a month, $1trillion, $2trillion, everything shy of saying a $gazzilion. Last night was just another installment in a political marketing display of either gross ignorance or very serious distortion of the truth.
We’re spending $10 billion a month while Iraqis have an $80 billion surplus.
…
Look, we have spent more money — we spend more money in three weeks on combat in Iraq than we spent on the entirety of the last seven years that we have been in Afghanistan building that country.
Let me say that again. Three weeks in Iraq; seven years, seven years or six-and-a-half years in Afghanistan.
According to the Congressional Research Service (I believe Senator Obama and Senator Biden are members of Congress) as of July of this year the war in Iraq has cost $444.2billion over the past 66 months (an average of $6billion a month-not $8, $10, or $12bil, but…what’s a few billion among Democratic Party senators?). The problem here is several fold.
First, for SIX years now Democrats have conveniently, deliberately, without apology or correction exaggerated the cost of the war in Iraq-often by combining the cost of the war in Iraq + the global war on terror (a phrase Democrats banned using in 2006 when they took Congress) + the war in Afghanistan.
Now, that last part is the key to Biden’s real fubar last night. You cannot combine the costs of 3 military campaigns which includes Afghanistan, and then compare it to the cost of Afghanistan (CRS says that’s about $100.4bn over 7 years).
So, I have to wonder…is freshman Senator Barack ignorant and just doesn’t get it, or are he and uber-DC-insider/veteran Senator Biden really that deceitful? I mean, why stop at doubling the cost of the war? Why not toss in the $40bil the Congress gave NYC to clean up the two zip codes that were leveled on 911? Why not toss in the cost of the creation of the Dept of Homeland Security? Let’s toss in the cost to the GDP caused by the 911 attacks? Maybe that’s where they came up with the $1gazzilion?
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It seems like all these candidates have trouble updating their talking points and figures, repeating numbers and facts already “debunked” or corrected by factcheckers.
Such as the $80 billion Iraqi surplus figure.
I notice that Obama and Biden are no longer using “McCain wants us to stay in Iraq for a 100 years”, but now say fuzzy things like, “McCain wants us to stay for a long time”? So essentially, they’re trying to say the same thing, without being called on it.
I think Biden was comparing apples to oranges and got himself tied in a knot. He mentions three weeks of combat in Iraq and seven/six and half years of reconstruction in Afghanistan but then suggested sending more combat troops to Afghanistan.
I have no idea what the reconstruction numbers are for Afghanistan but to compare the cost of building roads in a third world country to fighting a war seems pretty idiotic plus where do you draw the line if say a military unit rebuilds a school but gets hit by an IED on the way there?
What about this Iraqi surplus? Is it accurate?
I would look at it as our responsibility to continue funding our troops while Iraq uses such monies to stabilize their government and society — in the future, we’ll have stable financial and security partnerships with Iraq that will dwarf the war costs we’ve incurred.
Your thoughts?
According to Factcheck.org:
From Newsvine:
Medved:
Thanks God we can get real information on Internet with Facts checks sites, because nobody can count on the MSM to do it. Thanks Wordsmith for that information.
That makes this now bloated & pork padded $810 bil bailout the equivalent of staying in Iraq for 11.25 years…. the latter a bargain by comparison.
Mata, don’t forget the
$630bn the Fed kicked in when stocks crashed last week
$625bn budget the Dems’ Congress just passed
$25bn for automaker bailout (might have been included in budget)
$XXXbn for Freddie/Fannie bailout
$XXXbn for the AIG bailout
all total, the cost of the war in Iraq is freakin’ NOTHING compared to the Dodd/Frank bill that Americans have to pay.
And I always wonder, whenever I hear these extravagant figures tossed around, how much of that was money that would have been spent anyway during normal peacetime operations?
Eric,
Dead on correct. We’ve spent about 1 yr extra “normal” budget on military operations (using the accurate numbers) in 66 months than “normal”. Most (as in overwhelming amount) of this money is paid to Americans (soldiers/contractors/industry/shipping). Military and defense civilian salary is part of this, as our my vehicles, leaps in technology, and increased operations costs. Some went to third country nationals, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan through local and European vendors, extra foreign aid to our 30+ coalition partners to all their military forces to communicate and integrate with ours (radios, training, etc).
Adding in Afghanistan ups the cost more, but the return on investment (no attacks since 9-11-01 vs multiple attacks in the 90s and the destruction/dismemberment of islamic fascist strongholds, training grounds, forces, and the revealing and/or destruction of its finances) of killing the enemy on their own soil, and not ours is immense. We can also add other theaters in the GWOT which are under normal operations: Anti-piracy in the Straits of Malacca and off the Somali coast, training allied military forces, force protection, force modernization, base improvements and expansions (or closures) from the BRAC, etc.
It is also A LOT cheaper than rebuilding multiple US zipcodes and eventually cities after terror attack after attack after attack (as the pattern of the 90s indicated that AQ would continue to press attacks if not stopped or if the US, again, took a passive response). The sheep can ignore this pattern as they do the rest of the truth about the GWOT, but when the left was in power, its leaders stated the same thing (but did nothing substantial).