War Costs Soar by a Third; Total Could Top $1.4 Trillion

It's not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq -- way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006," says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.

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Additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/war-costs-soar-.html

Yep. You can never have too much war.

At this rate, Eric Prince (CEO) and Gary Jackson (president) of Blackwater USA might have enough money to buy out Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and maybe even have enough left over to run for president themselves sans Mitt Romney.

For this kind of money we should be engaged in a full-scale conventional war with an entire continent or at least the two or three of the biggest non-nuclear nations in the world -- you know, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, big countries with 100 million plus populations that we could bomb for 20 years.

I'm sorry. Where were we? Oh, yeah. Why the world doesn't like us anymore.

Smedley Butler:

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.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

That is what Bush is all about, right? A free market. The ultimate ownership society. He and his friends own everything.

I went to the Weekly Standard link and read it.

These guys will never be happy until they have killed every person in the world who doesn't read The Weekly Standard.

It may happen on the right or it may happen on the left, but sooner or later a couple of psychos with a chemistry set are going to pull a Twelve Monkeys and I'll probably end up in the role of the guy who has to repeatedly go back in time to try and fix it (and that's if I'm lucky). As if my head isn't already in a highly altered state. (I was born this way. Can't blame it on drugs.)

Karen M -- I agree with you about William. William, you should write a book. Have you already?

Although I'm not sure what that means.

A reader of Chuck Palahniuk's novels bumps into these types of terms fairly often, so much so, that it is best to keep a browser window open to the Urban Dictionary www.urbandictionary.com while reading.

The thing is, Palahniuk is a well-respected author (i.e., Fight Club) and I don't think Anonymous is quite as well known. These particular jokes all seem to be coming from a place that probably has some of the pages stuck together.

I'm not here to take sides or pick a fight. I do have the right, I think, to prefer rational dialogue over potty humor, and since this blog is one of the best places I know to find rational political dialogue online and I can get more and better potty humor watching Family Guy, I thought I would make my preferences known.

Kitt mentioned FDL, TPM and Glenn.

Although she doesn't do news, Digby provides some of the most insightful commentary anywhere. I would put her up against any commentator in the country.

Juan Cole is the goto person on the Middle East. You stop by his blog once a day and you learn the facts, not the fiction, about Iraq, Iran and the current state of the complex processes that drive Middle East relationships.

Go to Scott Horton at Harper's and you will find yourself in the presence of an intellect and a eloquence that is unmatched. I love reading Scott's blog. Today alone, he has written a blog entry addressing public opinion on Cheney's impeachment, provided an essay (that's right, an essay) describing likely EU, US and Russian future relations and provided an excerpt from the writings of George Washington on tolerance.

I wish every one of these people would knock out a book a year, hit the NYT bestseller list and get themselves regular spots on television and radio so that more people will know that the blogosphere is a premier location for quality journalism and commentary.