The real costs of war
By Robert K. Johnson | Harmony, Minn.

One very significant high cost of the Iraq War that Stiglitz and Bilmes do not include in their “The Three Million Dollar War” is the very real cost of the quality of life impairment of wounded veterans.

The Veterans Disability Benefits Commission report of August 2007 found that 57 percent of all veterans with any kind of disability suffer “severe or very severe” bodily pain.
Using Congressional Budget Office figures for numbers of veterans receiving disability thru 2007, the authors estimate that, by 2017, 318,000 veterans will suffer bodily pain. If they were compensated just half the maximum rate of such veterans in the United Kingdom ($250,000), this would add $79.5 billion to the U.S. cost of the Iraq War.

The authors estimate the reduction in world economic growth is $6 trillion less due to the crowded out investment due to increased oil prices. They estimate that when reduced economic growth in the U.S. is added to the Iraq war cost, the total is $4 trillion. When calculating just the lost economic production of Iraqi deaths and injuries, the cost to Iraq is $8.6 trillion.

Add in the cost of our present foreclosure crisis, caused by deregulation, monetary and fiscal stimulus to offset the loss of investment in our economy in order to finance the war and oil imports, as Stiglitz and Bilmes point out, and they have forcefully driven home that costs alone, aside from the opportunity cost of not using the war costs to prevent global warming and possible impairment of the planet, make continuation of the Iraq war irrational.

The record shows that Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer understands this better than Al Franken.

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