ANOTHER LIE: IRAQ NOT AFGHANISTAN IS USA’S LONGEST WAR …

In order to further deceive the American public; Uncle Sam rarely speaks if ever of the Gulf War of 1991. In order to fool the American Public; the government twisted public perception to make it look like the present war is separate from the war of 1991 which is wrong.

The war of 1991 never ended.

Iraq from 1991 to 2003 aside from the crippling embargo was bombed regularly on a weekly bases; sometimes in a matter of days. Some of those bombings were major hitting Baghdad and other cities.

Days before the invasion if I remember correctly; USA launched major bombings of Iraq at the pretext of Saddam’s violation of the No-Fly-Zone of 1991. It is not counted as part of what has become known as Gulf War II: funny :-)

From January 1991 to December 2011 is 21 years of war and destruction; much longer than the war in Afghanistan deceptively referred to as USA’s longest war.

The statistic therefore in the following article is deceptive because it doesn’t include the war from 1991 to 2003 when Iraq was invaded. It is half-truth. 

Iraq war ends with a $4 trillion IOU

Veterans’ health care costs to rise sharply over the next 40 years

 

By Christopher Hinton, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The nine-year-old Iraq war came to an official end on Thursday, but paying for it will continue for decades until U.S. taxpayers have shelled out an estimated $4 trillion.

Over a 50-year period, that comes to $80 billion annually.

Although that only represents about 1% of nation’s gross domestic product, it’s more than half of the national budget deficit. It’s also roughly equal to what the U.S. spends on the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency combined each year.

 “The direct costs for the war were about $800 billion, but the indirect costs, the costs you can’t easily see, that payoff will outlast you and me,” said Lawrence Korb.

Caring for veterans, more than 2 million of them, could alone reach $1 trillion, according to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, in Congressional testimony in July.

More than 32,000 soldiers were wounded in Iraq, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Add in Afghanistan and that number jumps to 47,000.

Altogether, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost the U.S. between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, more than half of which would be due to the fighting in Iraq, said Neta Crawford, a political science professor at Brown University.

The annual budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs has more than doubled since 2003 to a requested $132.2 billion for fiscal 2012. That amount is expected to rise sharply over the next four decades as lingering health problems for veterans become more serious as they grow older.

Costs for Vietnam veterans did not peak until 30 or 40 years after the end of the war, according to Todd Harrison, a defense budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“We will have a vast overhang in domestic costs for caring for the wounded and covering retirement expenditure of the war fighters,” said Loren Thompson, a policy expert with the Lexington Institute. “The U.S. will continue to incur major costs for decades to come.” 

FULL ARTICLE:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/iraq-war-ends-with-a-4-trillion-iou-2011-12-15