Well, Shrub's going to announce shortly that we're going to blow the fuck out of Iraq. Yeah, hussein could leave, but he's not left yet, and I'm not picturing that happening. Everyone' s on the news prattling on about the "cost of the war". But nobody's actually running the numbers.
We've got an enourmous deficit in the US right now. Any money spent on the war is going to be borrowed, and current thinking is that the pentagon'll spring an $80B bill for the big kaboom. That's a lot of money.
What's really a lot of money is what we're ultimately going to pay. The current 30 year T-bill rate, according to Bloomberg, is 5.375. To a first approximation, a 30 year repay cycle at that rate costs about twice the original borrowing.
So, in addition to all the US soldiers we're going to cripple or permanently disable (serious casualty rates for the last kaboom in the area ranged between 40K and 80K people) , and all the lost productivity from the national guard units mustered up (and I really don't understand that one--is Iraq the 51st state or something?), and the terrorism losses (this will end up spawning terrorism on US soil, something that until now Iraq hasn't actually been involved with), we're going to drop at least 160 billion dollars.
Wheee.
The Shrub is definitely making a splash with this one. He will be remembered for it, though I take no bets as to how.
There are days when I wonder if the Shrub's an Apocalyptic...
Posted by Dan at March 17, 2003 07:57 PM | TrackBack (0)The thousands of soldiers who were moved from the US to Iraq had jobs they were doing Stateside (or wherever they were deployed). Someone has to do them while they are gone. Hence, calling up the National Guard and Army Reserve units.
As to your last line.... there is reason to believe that many of his advisors, if not him himself, are indeed Apocalyptic.
A lot of the national guard folks are, and have, gone to Iraq and Parts Mid-East. (The guy downstairs from me was mustered up, and he's in Kuwait at the moment) If it was just a replacement for troops going overseas it'd be one thing (though I really dislike that--the national guard should be for local defense and aid. This isn't a disaster, and we haven't been attacked domestically, so I don't think they should, though nobody asked me) but we're deploying national guard units outside US soil. That I really dislike.
And the Coast Guard--good grief, they're the one branch of the service that actively and constantly actually does something domestically regularly. The rest of the services are there if we find the need to blow someone up, but the Coast Guard's out there every day, patrolling shipping lanes, rescuing stranded boaters, fending off drug runners, and stuff like that. Pulling them off weakens domestic security even more than mustering up all the police and firemen who're in the national guard.
Dopey. Just dopey. And counter-productive.
Posted by: Dan at May 22, 2003 01:57 PM