It’ll pay for itself

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They told us it would pay for itself. Once they got the oil up and running, the money would just pour out. Reconstruction was a done deal.

Of course, that was a line of bull and was proved to be a fallacy back in 2004:

Nine months after the fall of Baghdad, as insurgents target oil installations and Iraqis queue for fuel, the Bush administration has abandoned its pre-war assertions that Iraq’s natural resources would largely fund reconstruction.

While opinion polls still show a majority of Americans support the war, most do not think they should be paying so much for Iraq’s rebuilding.

Before the war, US officials engaged in a delicate balancing act. They sought to counter the pervasive belief in the Middle East and Europe that the war was all about oil, while vaguely telling the US taxpayer not to worry about the cost.

Behind the scenes, however, senior figures in the administration – including Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary, Douglas Feith, in charge of Pentagon postwar planning, Vice-President Richard Cheney, as well as the CIA’s George Tenet – were being advised by former officials, experts and corporate bosses that the badly dilapidated Iraqi oil industry in no way represented a financial lifeline.

“With all the information available, it seems that those in charge chose not to know,” commented James Placke, a senior associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates who took part in “Iraq: The Day After”, a report produced by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a prestigious think-tank, shortly before the war. “Like other aspects of Iraq, those making policy believed what they wanted to believe about oil, without reference to the facts,” Mr Placke told the Financial Times.

Source: commondreams.org

Now, at the tail end of 2007, we find out this thing could cost us $1.6 trillion dollars. And that’s if we’re 100% out by the end of 2009.

That is some long cash.

The total economic impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated at $1.6 trillion by 2009, a congressional committee said in a report released Tuesday.

That is nearly double the $804 billion in direct war costs the White House requested so far from Congress, the Democratic-led Joint Economic Committee said.

The committee estimated $1.3 trillion in war costs by the end of 2008 for Iraq, and the remainder for Afghanistan.

The total war costs could grow to $3.5 trillion by 2017, the committee estimated.

Source: cnn.com

What’s the point of making money if you can’t enjoy spending it, I always say…

From: The Kid
Subject: Am I getting a deal ?
No wife, no kids. Shit I’m paying only… 1/4 x $20,900 = $5,225 A steal! I can spend the other 15675 on school loans to keep me outta iraq. Thanks G Dub!

You, me, and everyone else are getting fucked on that one.

Drink up. Only one more year of BushCo. to go.

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

11 Replies to “It’ll pay for itself”

  1. Some quick math, while loaded –

    Unrealistically low ball cost of this war – $1.6 Trillion USD

    Expected cost of oil to be proclaimed at moment, but most likely sometime after Christmas – $100 per barrel

    Average Daily Consumption of oil by the US – 20 Million barrels

    Total number of days Iraq will need to provide to the US to pay back their debt by shipping us oil for free – 800 days

    So, by 2009 we will have spent about 5 years, and will most likely loose more then 4000 people for roughly 800 days worth of oil.

  2. “Only one more year of BushCo. to go.” As a Washington placeholder yes, but their non-removable stain on the planet and especially on this nation will last forever. Do the listed costs include equipment loss, repair, and replacement? Most importantly, what about the long term health care costs for those who have served? That is a cost that will increase dramatically and funding needs to be secured long term, not FY to FY.

  3. In reply to the 800 days of free oil, if we ever get it, I presume it will be shipped back to the good old UAofA and given to the our most generous oil companies who will refine it, at a modest cost, and supply it to our fellow citizens, at a drastically reduced price, who have already paid for it through funding of the war and many young lives.

    The reality is we the American tax payers will never realize any benefit form the war.

  4. Im going to start building 29’er wheels out of wood. That way when rubber gets too expensive, I will be ahead of the game.

    Who has suspension these days anyhow?

  5. I gotta believe voting for President Ron Paul is about the best thing we in the USA can do in the near term to start fixing this catastrophe as much as possible.

    Law of the world: nobody rides for free.

    We all know its true. Time to grow up, harden up, and stop being pawns and slaves.

  6. I’ve seen some estimates that it will be $40,000 for every family in the US.

    I believe we should pass a law that identifies those Republicans, leaders and sheep, who were for this war, and they solely should bear the cost. So what if they will live in slavery for all their lives and through to their grandkids. That’s their fucking problem.

  7. I agree with Bush43 except for one thing. Those that KNOWLINGLY LIED to us to make their case for the war should be tried for treason and executed in the public square upon thier conviction.

    The sheep that followed were buying lies from those that should have been telling us the truth. They should be forced to sit through a civics lesson unitl they can pass a standardized test. I call my new program no idiot left behind.

  8. Knowingly Lied

    Making a list

    Checking it twice.

    George Bush, though knowingly is a bit shaky. Does a Hitler Chimp “know”?
    Dick Cheney
    Doug Feith
    Scooter Libby
    Karl Rove
    Donald Rumsfeld

    I would heartily endorse their trial for treason and the proper punishment due them.