"Pearl Harbor without war"

[Skybird]

Latest news is the joint economic committee's calculation of hidden war costs, making the war twice as expensive, and in ten years will have reached 3.5 trillion $US. It calculates the current direct costs to be 10.000 $US per average US family, and another 10.000 $US in hidden costs per average family.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/h...07_us_iraq.pdf

This study mainly examines potential future costs over a ten year window, up to the year 2017,
similar to the budget spending window that the CBO used. The paper focuses on a scenario corresponding
to the recent statement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that a protracted “Korealike”
presence would be required in Iraq. This scenario involves a drawdown in Iraq troop levels
of 66 percent by the year 2013, and a smaller drawdown of 33 percent in Afghanistan forces. The
scenario also assumes that some active conflict with insurgents continues over the period (CBO
2007a).
In recent testimony, the nonpartisan CBO detailed Federal direct appropriations and interest costs
for this scenario (CBO 2007b). These CBO estimates are used as a base for the analysis in this
report. Once the full economic costs of the war are added to the approximately $2.4 trillion in
Federal spending forecast under the CBO scenario, the total economic cost of the wars in Iraq and

Afghanistan rise by over $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion.

I wonder if the Irsq war would have taken place without people in 2003 still pumping their money into investements in the US. It is a war on tick, not beign waged by America's own finacial muscle. While foreign investors and natioins pay for it, all they get in return is more of already frightening many promissory notes, and the weak dollar meaning mounting problems for the european economies. The latter producing the usual consequences in our own European nations as well. the booming economy in germany has massively lost in momentum, since the low dollar is hurting it seriously by now. together with the high energy prices in Germany due to the energy cartel over here, it could make the economy fumble. the slowdown already has been put into numbers.

Since the consequences are felt and must be made up for not only by america alone, the costs of the Iraq war, and the financial situation of it's national budget and trade deficit is no internal American issue alone, but an issue that a great part of the global community and economy has a legitimate interest in, too. It is foreign money America is burning. That's why the call to America to bring it's finances and deficits back into a healthy order are absolutely legitimate, too.