The Daily Background

Over in Iraq, 91 Americans have perished so far this month. This is by far our highest death toll in a single month for the entire year, as violence is intensifying in much of Iraq. More than 3,500 Iraqi civilians died in August– the most recent month for which data are available (the exact number is not known this month both because the month is not over and the Iraqi government has stopped communicating with the United Nations about this sort of thing, for openly political reasons).

Regardless, we know that violence has been intensifying dramatically over recent weeks. More than 2,800 Americans have died while tens of thousands have been wounded since the American invasion in March of 2003. The exact number of Iraqi civillians killed during the war is unknown, but recent estimates have put that number at more than 650,000 (the Administration will only admit that 30,000 Iraqis “may” have died).

Nearly one million Iraqis have become refugees because of the war.

On the money end of the war, NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof writes today:

For every additional second we stay in Iraq, we taxpayers will end up paying an additional $6,300.

[…]
In the run-up to the Iraq war, Donald Rumsfeld estimated that the overall cost would be under $50 billion. Paul Wolfowitz argued that Iraq could use its oil to “finance its own reconstruction.”

But now several careful studies have attempted to tote up various costs, and they suggest that the tab will be more than $1 trillion — perhaps more than $2 trillion. The higher sum would amount to $6,600 per American man, woman and child.

[…]
Just to put that $2 trillion in perspective, it is four times the additional cost needed to provide health insurance for all uninsured Americans for the next decade. It is 1,600 times Mr. Bush’s financing for his vaunted hydrogen energy project.

The Bush Administration has been the first ever to cut taxes in a time of war, making American national debt rise dramatically higher than it ever has before. This is a war we will be paying for long after President Bush leaves office. To those who have lost their loved ones in this war, this cost of war must shrink compared to the price they have already paid.

Filed under: Tax Money, Iraq Related, Z-TDB Blog