US War Debt is more than Just Dollars

The cost of the war in U.S. fatalities has declined this year, but the cost in treasure continues to rise, from $48 billion in 2003 to $59 billion in 2004 to $81 billion in 2005 to an anticipated $94 billion in 2006, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The U.S. government is now spending nearly $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan, up from $8.2 billion a year ago, a new Congressional Research Service report found.

These are some of the hidden costs of war:

The cost of repairing and replacing equipment and developing new war-fighting materiel has exploded. In the first year of the invasion, such costs totaled $2.4 billion, then rose to $5.2 billion in 2004. This year, they will hit $26 billion, and could go as high as $30 billion, Kosiak said. On the other hand, at about $15 billion, personnel costs will drop 14 percent this year.

Question: how much of the personnel drop is allowed by or related to the continued (but soon to decline) numbers of private security companies? How does the Funding Bill for Iraq help our troops?

Cost comparisons with present and past wars is apples and oranges and doesn't make sense. At best, they should compare Desert Storm with OIF.

Annual war costs in Iraq are easily outpacing the $61 billion a year that the United States spent in Vietnam between 1964 and 1972, in today's dollars. The invasion's "shock and awe" of high-tech laser-guided bombs, cruise missiles and stealth aircraft has long faded, but the costs of even those early months are just coming into view as the military confronts equipment repair and rebuilding costs it has avoided and procurement costs it never expected.

Last year, the depots repaired and upgraded 600 helicopter engines. This year, they will see 700, Motsek said. A total of 318 Bradley Fighting Vehicles went through the depots in 2005; 600 will be cycled through in 2006. In 2001, the depots logged 11 million labor hours. Last year, that reached 20 million, and this year, it will total 24 million, Motsek said. Depot officials had hoped to work 27 million hours, but funding delays forced them to cut back.

Perhaps one of the key elements of this report is Rumsfeld's politics of transformation over-riding utility.

The Senate bill includes $230 million to replace an unspecified number of CH-46E Sea Knight helicopters lost in battle with three V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. In other words, senators plan to replace a Marine Corps workhorse with an experimental aircraft that critics say will never be useful in combat.

The AP added this to the argument of Osprey vs Other:

To pay for the Ospreys, the Senate Appropriations Committee - guided by the Corps - cut into funding for night vision goggles, equipment for destroying mines and explosives, fire suppression systems for light armored vehicles and new vehicles that can be transported into battle inside the V-22.

The reality is this:

Such costs were always there, Gertler said, but Bush administration officials and members of Congress put off maintenance and procurement expenditures to keep down the war's price tag.

Schoomaker said as much at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in February, when he remarked that a "bow wave" of costs "pushed forward from previous years" is now cresting.

The real cost is continually buried and hidden.

Schoomaker warned that such costs will continue, even after U.S. forces withdraw from Iraq. To fully re-equip and upgrade the U.S. Army after the war ends would cost $36 billion over six years, and that figure assumes U.S. forces would begin withdrawing in July and would be completely out of Iraq by the end of 2008, an assumption Bush dismissed when he suggested withdrawal will be up to his White House successor.

This probably does not impact Stiglitz's $1 - $2 TRILLION total cost of the Iraqi liberation to the United States. The operation that was supposed to pay for itself is in fact jeoporidzed our security (physical, ideological, social, and economic) beyond what Sadaam might have done should he have been left alone. The impact on programs that have real impact on countering terrorism -- that only cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars, drops in the bucket -- is enormous.

UPDATE: Donkephant (and the LA Times / AP) gives a breakdown of the $106 billion "Funding Bill for Iraq":

• 39.2 Billion for Operations and maintenance (Tactical items and repairs on the ground)
• 10.2 Billion for personnel (Too bad we pay our solders so little)
• 15.5 Billion for procurement (Except stuff like armor for vehicles, solders)
• 4 Billion for farmers hit by drought, floods and high energy costs (You know most of things this administration causes)
• $2.3 Billion to combat the avian flu. (Doesn't this go directly into Rumsfeld's personal account?)
• $1.1 Billion in aid for Gulf Coast fisheries (My god brothels for fish? Better not let the Christian right find out about this unmonitored fornicating)
• $648 Million for port security projects (Anyone else worried that this is second lowest on the list next to Highway Repair?)
• $700 Million to purchase a Mississippi rail line and give it to the state for a new coastal highway (Ya take this stupid train thing and sell it. Sorry about screwing you during the hurricane)
• $594 Million to repair highways damaged prior to Hurricane Katrina