Monday, April 7, 2008
The Iraq war is cheap.
$150 Billion per annum? You could cut health care fraud by that much.
by Ferdinand III
The US Federal Budget – Federal only – is $3 Trillion dollars. A mere trifle of $3 Trillion. Under the war-mongering, fascist, mean-spirited, tax-cutting Texan Bushitler, big mommy-state government has only increased by 33%. A mere 33%. Surely those heartless neo-cons could have increased spending by more! Iraq at $150 billion is a fantastically obscene 5% of the Federal Budget and a bloated all consuming monster at 1% of GDP! Wow. If only the US pulled out of Iraq the budget would be balanced! [hysterical, medicated laughter here].
Well not really. For us war mongering simpletons, when we are able to pull our heads up and withdraw our knuckles from dragging along the hallowed progressive ground, and see for example, the US Federal budget details, there are lots of items which cost quite a bit more than reshaping the failed states of the Middle East. This is not to say of course that reforming failed fascist states, dragging medieval Islam into modernity, or creating forward bases to protect our oil supplies, security interests or our allies in the Middle East is a noble endeavour. Ahem. Of course not. After all the polar bears are dying and Islam is peaceful!
One has to wonder who exactly the neandarthalic simpletons really are. Iraq will cost $150 to 200 billion per annum, per year for at least 10 years. McCain was right. US forces are still in Germany, Japan and South Korea 50 or 60 years after the end of hostilities. They will still be in Iraq, if the US continues to exist and has not been destroyed by the multi-cult club, in 2050. So much so obvious. But is Iraq really the budget killer that the anti-war, anti-reality, pro-Islam, 'we hate Bushitler club' say it is?
Look at the numbers in the bloated, expansive and ever glistening [due to its many layers of moist fat] US Federal Budget:
-Total Budget 2008: $2,9 Trillions
Expenses on the War:
-Global war on terror: $145 Billion
-Total security spending including the military: $615 Billion
-Agriculture including subsidies: $70 Billion
-Social Security: $544 billion
-Medicare: $325 billion
-Medicaid: $186 billion
-All other mandatory programs: $357 billion. [These programs include Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, Child Nutrition, Child Tax Credits, Supplemental Security for the blind and disabled, Student Loans, and Retirement / Disability programs for Civil Servants, the Coast Guard and the Military.]
-Estimated subsidies for Ethanol/GlobalWarming: $30 Billion
-Estimated subsidies for Big Business: $100 billion [Hoover.org report]
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/summarytables.html]
And that is just the Federal budget. The costs of the war against fascist Islam are overwhelmed by other items. In fact there is an estimated $100 Billion per year fraud in just health care. As an FBI report states from February 2008:
“At least 3 percent of U.S. health-care costs (about $60 billion) can be attributed to fraud, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. Of that, 1 percent is attributed to medical ID theft - an ominous figure when the numbers are triangulated, according to Sharon Ormsby, section chief for the financial crimes section of the FBI.....If you figure by 2012, national health-care expenditure costs for the country will be approximately $3 trillion, you look at the fact that the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association conservatively estimates health-care fraud to be 3 percent to 5 percent of that expenditure amount,” she said. “That’s a significant amount of fraud, so we do have a strong interest in it.”
The US spends close to $1 Trillion a year on health and medicare and about 1-5% of the total costs are fraudalent or wasted. Nice. How about cutting out those massive costs instead of harping on the Iraq war budget?
Or how about reforming Social security, Medicare and all these other government mismanaged items to effect savings?
How about the little idea of privatisation to reduce Federal budgets?
Or maybe we can cut out agri and business subsidies totalling $150 billion per year? Isn't that more worthwhile then leaving pre-modern states in existence in the Middle East? Or do GE, GM, Exxon, IBM and other mega-firms really, really, really, need your money? [you know for the children's children's future, business spin-offs, technological advancement etc blah blah blah].
How about comparing Bushitler's war with other past wars [oh no some factual comparisons, yikes!]. Robert Whaples, professor of economics at Wake Forest University, has measured the cost of each major American war and found that current Iraqi war has consumed a smaller percentage of GDP – less than 2 % - than every other American war except the first Gulf War (which measured just 1 percent of GDP). Vietnam? 12% of GDP. World War Two? 110% of GDP. The Cold War? 5-8% of GDP.
So the question is this. Is it worthwhile to drag Islam into the real world, protect our oil supplies which we discovered, and turn Iraq into another South Korea? Ask yourself this, was it worth the costs totalling Trillions of dollars over 50 years to keep US soldiers in Germany, Japan and South Korea? These are now stable allies. Are we worse off as a globe now that democratic governments reign in these wealth producing, trading and allied states? Can you honestly answer no?
It is clear that the anti-war crowd is hysterical. There are hundreds of billions of dollars which could easily be cut out of just the Federal budget if cost cutting was their primary concern. But it isn't. All of the world's woes must be blamed on Iraq and Bushitler including not enough government spending, even as remarkably, US federal spending has sky-rocketed 33% during Bush's tenure.
As Senator Lieberman and Congressman Graham wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“There is no question the war in Iraq – like the Cold War, World War II and every other conflict we have fought in our history – costs money. But as great as the costs of this struggle have been, so too are the dividends to our national security from a successful outcome, with a functioning, representative Iraqi government and a stabilized Middle East. The costs of abandoning Iraq to our enemies, conversely, would be enormous, not only in dollars, but in human lives and in the security and freedom of our nation. Indeed, had we followed the path proposed by antiwar groups and retreated in defeat, the war would have been lost, emboldening and empowering violent jihadists for generations to come.”
How true. It is not the costs of Iraq per se which matters to a lot of people, it is the distasteful, poisonous idea that the US will actually defend itself against a pagan fascism. That is what truly rankles in the breasts of the anti-war, anti-American crowd.