Pentagon Lied About Cost of War on Terror - Real price tag $5.6 Trillion
The Pentagon earlier this year said it has spent $1.5 Trillion on Post 9/11 wars. That's a helluva a lot. But now Newsweek reports that they grossly lied about the true amount: $5.6 Trillion!
The Department of Defense reported earlier this year that it had spent around $1.5 trillion on conflicts, including putting putting troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, air raids in Syria and Iraq to battle the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and a drone campaign and raids against extremists in Pakistan.
But that figure appears to underplay the real cost of war for the American taxpayer, at least according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University. It puts the total cost at $5.6 billion, or $23,000 per taxpayer. [...]
The study examines not only the money spent by the Pentagon but also the State Department, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Homeland Security, for resources dedicated to the “war on terrorism.”
The total costs include financial support for allies in the battle against extremist groups, mostly from eastern Europe, such as Croatia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, and a trillion dollars added for the care of veterans who may have received injuries in the conflicts.
The U.S. has spent 16 years in Afghanistan, a conflict that is set to continue with President Donald Trump announcing in September an expansion of the U.S. military presence there to battle the Taliban and ISIS.
That's 3.6 times more than the "estimate" the Pentagon chose to reveal. Plus we already know that the Pentagon cannot account for over 8.5 Trillion in spending between 1996-2012, either evidence of astonishing incompetence, corruption or most likely both.
You want to know why we didn't get single payer healthcare that Obama promised, or even one with a public option? You want to know why Obama was so hot to create a Grand Bargain with the Republicans to cut the safety net? Maybe having to spend a grossly excessive amount on these unnecessary aggressive wars to "protect our freedoms" (dog whistle for make sure government contractors can get filthy rich off our military killing millions of innocent people) is one possible answer. Guess you can see why the Pentagon didn't want to reveal the true cost to our nation of these senseless, criminal wars.
Imagine how much money $5.6 Trillion represents. It's a little less than one third (32.9 percent) of the expected 2017 GDP for the United States of $17 Trillion. Money that we could have spent investing in our people and infrastructure and improving the "general welfare" was just pissed away to make a few corporations absurdly profitable and sustain the careers of generals and bureaucrats in the intelligence community, K-Street lobbyists, Neocons employed at "Think Tanks" and of course help replenish keep the campaign funds of numerous politicians - both Republicans and Democrats. Oh and did I say to kill millions of people who's only crime was to be in the way of our Military Indistrial Complex? That, too.
Not proud to say I'm and American. Not one bit.
Comments
Bomb a kid in Syria? Hell Yea!
Feed a kid in Akron? Bootstraps!
The real SparkyGump has passed. It was an honor being your human.
Nah just another CT s/
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
I've often thought
that since corporations are people, then consequently, people are corporations, fully deserving of all the tax breaks and loopholes that corporations enjoy.
Just as corporations write off the cost of their headquarters against their income, so too should the working man deduct from his earnings the cost of his headquarters, his home. Whether a mortgage or rent, it is no different as being the cost of doing business, earning revenue and generating taxes to be paid to the government. All endeavors involving growing your business, which is growing a family and creating future revenue and taxes, should also be deductible. Or at least loopholed to encourage future tax revenue to continue to grow.
Issues like health care would be the same as food, maintenance of the business and fully deductible. All costs associated with the business such as transportation, insurances, even clothing should be treated as though it were a corporation, fully deductible from revenue.
Now, I know what you are thinking.
"Well then nobody would be paying taxes, or at the least, an enormous reduction in revenue for the government, how would it ever function (as though it's functioning now)"?
Starving the government of funds would starve the military out of existence.
Which brings me to consider, "Who does our military machine really protect?"
Well, it protects those who have the most to lose. So, determining who has the most is the ones that should be paying the most to keep and maintain a protective force.
Boiling it down to this question: "Am I willing to give up my Social Security and Medicare benefit to shift the burden of funding what is essentially a trillion dollar a year military machine?
Since they are endlessly trying to take those benefits away from me anyway, I'm leaning towards YES.
Maybe I think too much.
Thanks for putting a real number on our military arm of Corporate America.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
it's funny, you can always find some conservative
dumbass who will opine something along the lines of, "only property owners should get to vote," but if you suggest that only property owners should pay taxes for the defense department, you'll get a whole different kind of response.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Maybe Trump can get us a better deal.
I think Trump understands
who he works for now. That's why we're ramping up all over the effing place: Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, western Pacific, Africa ....
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Proof is in the pudding eh Steven.
It doesn't really matter how he got there anymore. Same as with Obama, he's there so that's all that matters.
Yep.
"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott
Total crime what the crooks in this country did to our kids.
Sending all the bad juju I can muster their way.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Thank you, thank you, thank you
For the last five years, I have been saying that the real cost of these wars was somewhere between $4-$6 Trillion dollars. The American people have the right to know exactly how much of their tax dollars and the future of them and their children has been thrown down the black hole of war.
During my 4.5 years with our local Peace vigil, one of the talking points that I used, especially talking with self described conservatives, was the real fiscal costs of these wars. It was a great way to bridge the political gulf that has been built between us all.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy