How Wartime Spending Decisions will Cancel Out the Peace Dividend: Report
Costs to U.S. taxpayers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could reach six trillion dollars, making them the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history, according to a new report by Linda Bilmes, a Harvard University researcher and a former Bill Clinton administration official.
“The single largest accrued liability of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to war veterans,” she wrote in the report, The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets.
“The US has already spent close to $2 trillion in direct outlays for expenses related to Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation New Dawn (OND),” according to the report.
“The paper does not recalculate previous estimates of the economic costs of the impact on human life, nor the extensive impact inside of Iraq,Afghanistan and the region, which if included would bring the costs much higher,” said the report author. Read full report in pdf format HERE or in MSWord HERE
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DISASTER CALENDAR – April 1, 2013 —
SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,076 Days Left
Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016.
- SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,076 Days Left to ‘Worst Day’ in the brief Human History
- The countdown began on May 15, 2011 …
GLOBAL WARNINGS
- WARNING: Human impact 2.85 x Earth’s diminishing carrying capacity
- WARNING: RAPID PLANETARY DECLINE IN PROGRESS!
- Europe: The First Phase of Collapse Has Started
- United States: The First Phase of Collapse Has Begun
Global Disasters: Links, Forecasts and Background
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