Lies, Lies

Lies, dripping off your mouth like dirt
Lies, lies in every step you walk
Lies, whispered sweetly in my ear
Lies, how do I get out of here?
--Lies, Rolling Stones
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Various news outlets quote the administration price tag of the Iraq war at $10-12 billion per month. However, as recently reported in the Washington Post, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) estimates the actual cost of the war to be $720 million per day, or $500,000 per minute. Which, at $21,600,000,000 per month, is roughly double the figures being bandied about. $21.6 billion dollars per month spent on occupying Iraq, to what end?

The AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church, is based on analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes. As the group's estimate takes into account "not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware," it seems a more realistic accounting than that of the administration.

The AFSC also provides alternative uses for those funds, such as stateside education programs which are getting the short shrift.

"The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs."

"In 2006, Bilmes, who was an assistant secretary of commerce under President Bill Clinton, and Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, placed the total cost of the Iraq war at more than $2.2 trillion, not counting interest. The American Friends group used cost breakdowns and interest projections from the Congressional Budget Office to calculate the daily cost of war . . . "

The actual cost is there for all to see, yet the bargain basement price of $12 billion still zings around the airwaves.

The administration's cost estimate is as big a lie as is the war.