Squandering billions in Iraq while U.S. suffers

By Eric Margolis

“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” famously quipped U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen back in the 1960s.

02/11/07 "Toronto Sun' -- -- Our minds boggled last week at U.S. government estimates that President George W. Bush’s so-called “war on terror” (including Afghanistan and Iraq) will cost at least $690 billion US by next year. That’s more than the total cost of World War I, Korea, or Vietnam, and second only to World War II’s $2 trillion.

This means that by 2008, Bush’s wars in the Muslim world will have cost each American man, woman and child $2,300.

Defeat looms in Iraq; Afghanistan is headed that way. And now U.S. intelligence reports al-Qaida is stronger than ever. Osama Bin Laden, who said the only way to expel U.S. influence from the Muslim world was to bleed the U.S. financially, must be beaming.

As kings have found since the dawn of time, in war, money counts as much as armies. Wars always cost far more than originally projected.

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