Direct US costs for wars since 2001 surpass 1 trillion
 

Money well spent. Money well spent...?
http://www.costofwar.com/

Where the state's money comes from (57 cent of every dollar spent, are new debts, 34 Cent are income taxes, 5% are corporate taxes) - and what it is spent for.
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/taxday2010

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/

*Thinks of a way to get that counter rolling into his bank account* :D

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives..."

1933, Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

I wonder how many Americans would want to erase the wars and have that trillion still available.

I wonder how long before The Great Implosion.

What if they gave a war and no one came?

The industry would be very disappointed.;)

:har:

I'm still waiting delivery of my barrel of Iraqi oil. :nope:

I think it is in the hands of the Iraqis who would be greeting us as liberators. :nope:

On the question of , is it all worth it? IMO the opinions that matters most, are the ones coming from the the people that did their time there. Rest of us were not there, and are just armchair politician/generals. So we wouldn't really know.

Lets look at the Iraq war:

-it was supposed to turn a profit, current cost: $725 Billion;

-4,000+ US dead, 25,000+ US wounded;

-estimated 100,000 Iraqi dead;

-estimated 4,700,000 Iraqi refugees (2.7 in Iraq, 2.0 in neighboring countries);

-no WMDs found;

-few oil contracts awarded to US Oil company, no long term Oil supply garantees;

-Iran will probably have more long-term influence in Iraq than USA, although this may be debatable;

-situation in the ME as volatile as ever;

Was it worth it? probably not based on those numbers, but then hindsight is always 20/20.

........

Although if you follow Cheney's rationale, the real reason the US went in to Afghanistan and Iraq was to show that any 9/11 type attack on US soil would be met by a massive retaliation, so lets add:

-no successful foreign terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11;

Again, was it worth it?

On the other hand, would any of this have happened if 3,000 innocent civilians had not died on 9/11?

Yeah...the US could buy Finland :O:

Not holding my breath.