Article

2003-07-11 Iraq

MSNBC: Iraq Costing US $4 Billion Per Month

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Posted by Anonymous 2003-07-11 12:45:33 AM|| || Front Page|| [3 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Gee. that's almost $16/month/person based on 250,000,000 people in the U.S. IF we're going to make progress on the War on Terror that, it certainly seems to be worth it to me.

Posted by Ralph 2003-7-11 2:42:55 AM|| 2003-7-11 2:42:55 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Is this one of those bogus military cost articles? For example, is it including the normal costs of having these troops, regardless of where they are? Does it include ordinance that would've been used in practice activity, food they would've eaten anyway, and other NORMAL costs? Etc. Etc. Etc.

Sometimes the miltary reports it straight - $X is the additional cost of Mission X. Sometimes, when they're playing the budget-busting game to get more for next cycle, they fudge and include normal costs of doing business with the troops in their barracks on normal duty cycles.

Sometime the US has played this game when funding came from foreign sources, such as Gulf War I & the Saudis / Kuwaitis. We made a fucking profit.

This is another Anonymous. Way too many fucking Anons, hereabouts.

These postings by Anons of anything they can dredge up that they hope is liberal enough to qualify as a troll post is your call, Fred. But this is the last time I'll comment on an obvious troll article or on one posted by an Anon.

Posted by PD 2003-7-11 3:47:20 AM|| 2003-7-11 3:47:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Is this one of those bogus military cost articles?

Probably - for the military brass, Iraq is going to be the mother of all scrounging expeditions (from the Federal budget) - not for them personally, but for their respective service branches. It's like Enron's infamous off-balance sheet accounting - every Christmas wish list item will have its day - the costs will simply be buried in Iraq expeditionary costs.

For example, shipments will be reported lost to Iraqi attacks that aren't actually destroyed, and orders for new equipment will turn up in the $3.9B funding request. Operational contingencies will somehow dictate that something on the Christmas wish list will be purchased. Why? Because the actual equipment that was supposed to be destroyed still exists - the whole point of all this paperwork, from the military's standpoint, was to get other nice-to-have-but-not-strictly-necessary things that were deleted out of the original military budget.

Other symptoms of scrounging could involve stories about how desert sand mysteriously fouled up equipment in ways that did not show up in tests involving sandblasting prior to military-wide deployment. The result? More requests for equipment replacements that get reallocated / reclassed for other wish list items.

This is another Anonymous.

His specialty appears to be posting articles that serve up information completely out of context.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2003-7-11 8:36:53 AM|| 2003-7-11 8:36:53 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 His specialty appears to be posting articles that serve up information completely out of context.

Actually, I was giving too much credit to the reporter who wrote the article. The big problem with some of these reporters on the military isn't only that they're liberal America-haters - it's that they have absolutely no idea of how the military works - either from an operational (i.e. war) or a bureaucratic perspective.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2003-7-11 8:43:19 AM|| 2003-7-11 8:43:19 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 The only instances where DemocRATS and their accomplices in the media are concerned about the cost of a government program are a) on defense spending and b) independent counsels investigating other DemocRATS. Screw 'em.

Posted by Raj 2003-7-11 11:21:06 AM|| [http://angrycyclist.blogspot.com] 2003-7-11 11:21:06 AM|| Front Page Top

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