And your guy sent 4K soliders to their death along with the Operation Iraqi Freedom pricetag of $806 billion. But, wait-it is the gift that keeps on giving; "One key way that the war's costs will outlast its operations is in veterans' health care. A recent paper from the Center for American Progress estimates that the projected total cost of veterans' healthcare and disability will run between $422 billion and $717 billion." And then there's: "Whatever the cost, some experts say that it wasn't what was financed in the Iraq War but how it was financed that is problematic. It basically was financed through debt, which is a completely different issue, says Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It's really the decision of how to pay for it that has had such a negative effect on the U.S. economy. Because unlike any previous war in U.S. history, this was paid for entirely by debt at the same time that we cut taxes." http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/12/15/what-did-the-iraq-war-cost-more-than-you-think
Actually, it is going to cost a lot more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/14/us-iraq-war-anniversary-idUSBRE92D0PG20130314 "The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said." The kicker is that "the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Steven Bucci, in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think-tank- agreed with its observation that the forecasts for the cost and duration of the war proved to be a tiny fraction of the real costs. "If we had had the foresight to see how long it would last and even if it would have cost half the lives, we would not have gone in," Bucci said. "Just the time alone would have been enough to stop us. Everyone thought it would be short." But, heck we want to put those same Republicans in charge of our budget now~~ stupid is as stupid does.
