REALITY CHECK
James Campion
THE BILL FOR REBUILDING IRAQ

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The Small Details of The Bush War
WARNING: The following numbers are not official, for no government would dare divulge dumping billions of tax dollars to restructure areas of the world it pummeled into granite powder.
Our series on the pending military action in Iraq continues this week with a breakdown of the inevitable rebuilding of the country we'll be bombing into near oblivion in a few weeks. A team of tireless accountants - excluding my accountant, who was excused to allow for the constant 24 hour watch which effectively keeps me from financial self-destruction, and my father, who after nearly 40 years of this shit has taken on the monumental feat of willing NC State into the NCAA tournament - joined our War Room to estimate the taxpayer investment in razing and then reconstructing a nation halfway across the globe.

Make no mistake; this fiasco will not be lengthy nor will it be anything approaching competitive. The Iraqi army is weaker than it was 12 years ago, and that wasn't exactly a fighting machine. Even with troops spread out all over Europe and Asia and other points Middle East, the US Army will obliterate the Iraqi infrastructure within a month, tops.

And when those left are finished surrendering to CNN camera crews, the bill will come due.
Okay, now raise your hands if you know the extent of US tax dollars funneled into the rebuilding of Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo or Afghanistan in the past decade. If your hands are still down, use them to hang on to your wallet.

We'll start with Somalia, because in terms of rebuilding, it was a drop in the bucket at $1 billion of US military and humanitarian funds spent between in 1993 and '94. But later in '96, the World Bank estimated the total cost of cleaning up the Clinton Administration's other charitable fascination with Bosnia at $5.1 billion over four years.

However, the US costs alone reached that number after the first three years culminating in a grand total of $30 billion for the complete economic reconstruction of the Balkans. This included our funds to rebuild Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Romania at $2.2 billion.

The numbers on piecing together what was left of Kosovo are a little hazier, but the more concrete breakdown of war costs make up for that. According to a June, 1999 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments analyst report in Rueters, the US coughed up $3 billion to take down Slobodan Milosevic amid the fumes of what was once Yugoslavia. This incorporated $1 million cruise missiles, 300 grand worth of tank-busting munitions and the occasional laser-guided bombs running $100,000 apiece. While the rest of Europe picked up the tip, our 1,000 aircraft, including 24 Apache attack helicopters, 18 multiple launch rocket system artillery pieces and some 5,500 supporting Army troops rounded out the grace-saving gig. And when you get to the cost of hanging around and making sure the deal sticks, the US spend up to $3.5 billion the first year to deploy peacekeepers.
Now for what continues to be an ad hoc covert operation in Afghanistan, going on its second year of spying, torture and all around merriment, according to a BBC report one year ago, the cost of rebuilding a country that was worth about 40 cents of infrastructure when we began gutting it is $297 million a year.

Note that our research does not go back to the tons of cashed dumped into Desert Storm 12 years ago, because of cost-of-living curves and vacillating inflation numbers, but suffice to say that wasn't cheap.

This latest and greatest standoff with Iraq will also not be cheap, but it's too late to back down financially or politically. The cost of ramping up this sucker has already rivaled the first six bombings of Baghdad alone. And unlike the Gulf War, this will be a full-scale invasion to unseat the current government, which means a complete dedication to rebuilding the damages, defending the next regime and keeping overall peace in a region our current government feels will start to be cleansed by this maneuver.

Our dollar share in this starts at $15 billion a year, while also risking the lives of thousands of US troops defending a reported coalition government that includes Sunnis, Shias and Kurds.
Whether this war protects our oil interests, bolsters Israel's defense or puts the scare into terrorists remains to be seen. What is known is the tremendous financial burden it will put on the American taxpayer, the majority of which want little to nothing to do with it. To a nation struggling through an economic quagmire, this will either be crippling or productive. Again, a hard gig to predict, but one that is all but inevitable save Saddam Hussein's head appearing on a platter at the UN anytime soon.

© James Campion March 2003
realitycheck@jamescampion.com

A Reader's Response:
An opinion from Venezuela
Date:
Mon, 21 Apr 2003
I think your worries are not totally justified: Consider that only importing 4 million barrel a year from Iraq, the USA could be saving up to $ 12.000 per year. I expect the oil price to fall not less than 8 US $ / per barrel after the war. If half of it is spent in reconstruction, still the USA would be saving $ 6.000 million per year and creating hundreds of specialized jobs in the USA and in Iraq.
It sounds coldhearted, but…
A Venezuela reader,
Plinio Cabrera PhD
plinio.cabrera@jantesa.com.ve

James Campion On 'The War in Truth'

'There is no way the radical Muslim hatred of the US will be any worse or lessened in the wake of this invasion. We are dealing with thousands of years of religion fanaticism..'

ABANDONING REASON AT THE FORT
REALITY CHECK with James Campion
'My fears are real now. Not even Georgetown is answering my calls'.

'You know what the Axis of Evil is? Money. Money. Money.'

Previously on Hackwriters by James Campion

HOW THE APPLE WAS WON KEN KESEY RIP SWANSONG ISRAEL - Blinded by the light? GEORGETOWN UNCLE RUDY RESURRECTION CIA Elton Brand Feedback to James Campion articles Battleline America ABC News Dick Cheyney Cabelvision HolyHell Parenting in a predatory world Blamegame - The FB! knew More Feedback from Readers May02 God On my Left Reader's Feedback3 September 02 'Going back to the USSR' Standoff in Washington All Together Now - Recession

James Campion The Toys of Summer The 2002 Baseball Season NYC - ONE YEAR AFTER Mid-Term Madness The House will stay Republican Senator Quitter - Ballad of a Gutless Swine The Legal Persecution of Lenny Bruce The Birthing of History In Praise of "Gangs of New York" The Bill for Rebuilding Iraq

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