Folks,

I have been meaning to revisit the cost of the Iraq war for some time, but this snippet from yesterday’s Progress Report did a suitable job of it, so I’m just pasting it here.

Back in 2003-4, I had numerous email conversations that went on for days with some of my readers about the expected cost of the war. Somehow, they believed the Administration’s lowball estimates, claiming that the $200 billion figure cited by White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was way over the top, that it was the result of “double counting” and a whole lot of other nonsense.

I, for one, never bought that. I thought $200 billion and several years was itself extremely lowball…and so far, I’ve been right.

Not that any of the aforementioned readers have had the decency to admit it.

This war isn’t going away any time soon. Not even if the Congress votes to de-fund it. The Saudis have said recently and publicly that our occupation of Iraq is illegal and unjustified, but I think that’s just a requisite CYA for domestic assuagement. They know better than anyone that if the U.S. military wasn’t in Iraq right now quelling the Shi’ites, that Saudi forces would have to step into the breach–which they no-how want to do. They need us there to fight a proxy war for them.

Especially now that a recent Woods-Mackenzie study has reviewed Iraq’s oil reserves and concluded that they were much larger than previously thought–second only to Saudi Arabia’s–there’s no way we can leave Iraq. Not now, and probably not ever.

So what does this do for the accounting on the War on Terror War for Energy?

I’m now raising my estimate: Half a trillion is still lowballing it. Big time.

The U.S. military has spent an average of $44 billion a year to protect oil operations in the Persian Gulf, and they’ve been doing that for years. Here’s a sneak preview from a new article I just finished, which will go out later this week:

We import about 800 million barrels per year of black gold from the Persian Gulf. Divided into $44 billion, that works out to slightly less than $55 a barrel. When oil is trading on the open market around $65!

If those protection costs weren’t externalized onto the U.S. military (your tax dollars at work!) but priced into the world market, I reckon that would put oil at around $120 a barrel.

Does anybody still think renewable energy is too expensive compared to oil?

This administration has lied pretty much every time it has opened its mouth about the Iraq war. From the missing WMDs to the purported connections between Saddam and al Qaeda; from the alleged attempt to purchase Nigerian yellowcake to the outing of Valerie Plame; from the assertion that Iraq could fund its own reconstruction to the firing of the guy who provided the (lowball) $200 billion estimate; from the promise that we would be greeted as liberators, to the denial that Iraq has descended into a civil war that we cannot win; from the completely fabricated stories about Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, to the persistent under-reporting of casualties, woundings and long-term illnesses suffered by soldiers; from the “they hate us because we’re free” pabulum to the secretive attempt to privatize Iraq’s oil wealth and put it into the hands of U.S. oil companies…it has been one, big, fat, cynical, outrageous, and unforgiveable lie.

And speaking of shamless liars, check out the latest bit of “revisionist history” visited upon us by none other than Mr. “Global Warming is a Hoax” himself:

“The whole idea of weapons of mass destruction was never the issue, yet they keep trying to bring this up.”

— Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), 4/27/07, criticizing Congress and the media for “mischaracterizing” the reasons for U.S. involvement in Iraq

VERSUS

“Our intelligence system has said that we know that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction — I believe including nuclear.”

— Inhofe, 8/18/02

Ugh. I mean…??? How dumb (or forgetful) do these guys think we are?

When I think about how that half a trillion plus has been and will be spent, with hardly any serious debate on the alternatives…and then think about how far half a trillion would take us in developing renewables and weaning ourselves off of foreign oil…I just shake my head. It just seems too brain-dead to be true. Is there nobody driving this bus?

But that discussion is for another time…

Until then,

–C

IRAQ — SUSTAINED WAR WILL LEAD TO ‘FEWER JOBS AND SLOWER ECONOMIC
GROWTH’: According to the Congressional
Research Service, the vetoed
$124 billion Iraq supplemental and the President’s new “request for $116
billion” to fund the war in the next fiscal year will “push
the total for Iraq to $564 billion.” That amount is “about ten
times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started
four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go.” Before the
war, the White House estimated the “conflict would cost about $50 billion” and
“White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey lost
his job after he offered a $200 billion estimate.” Robert Hormats, author of
The Price of Liberty, worries that the Bush administration’s “painless” approach
to war funding in which the “average American” feels “no economic consequence”
will hamper our nation’s ability to address domestic concerns like Social
Security and Medicare. A new
report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that Hormats’s
concerns are legitimate and that sustained expenses of the war in Iraq will
likely lead “to fewer
jobs and slower economic growth.” The study shows that while some short-term
benefits to increased military spending are likely, the long-term strains on the
economy produces “considerably
higher” inflation and interest rates, reduces the number of available jobs,
and “diverts
resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment.” As
Hormats said of the war time economy, “You
can’t have business as usual.”