Four Years in Iraq
“I don’t believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense…[Reconstruction] funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it.” ~Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, March 27, 2003.
Iraq War and Reconstruction Spending
According to a recent article in Mother Jones, the Iraq War costs American taxpayers $1.9 billion a week, $275 million a day. Per year, the numbers look like this:
| 2001/2002 | $2.5 billion |
| 2003 | $51 billion |
| 2004 | $77.3 billion |
| 2005 | $87.3 billion |
| 2006 | $100.4 billion |
In April 2003, the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) reported that the cost of rebuilding Iraq wouldn’t “even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.” Iraqi reconstruction has cost the United States $34.1 billion to date. Rebuilding postwar Germany cost $30.3 billion (in 2006 dollars).
In 2003, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said oil exports would rebuild Iraq “relatively soon.” But last year, Iraq missed its export goal by nearly 1/3 and spent only $2 billion on reconstruction, while the U.S. spent $5.4 billion.
Restoring Electricity in Baghdad
Baghdad gets an average of 4 hours 30 minutes of electricity a day. Estimated cost of boosting Iraq’s power capacity by 2010: $20 billion. Estimated cost of installing enough solar panels to power every home in Iraq: $6.6 billion.
Read More: Iraq War, cost of war, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Mark Bryan
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The greed is unbelievable. When are they going to be satisfied with all that they have stolen? I think this war will be over when they finally have had their fill of money.
Joe, This is great!
I’m going to get a “ticker” in my town.
If they won’t let us see dead or coffins, we can still show numbers.
Rebuilding postwar Germany was done without Halliburton. Big difference.
Halliburton, the deserters, pillaged the U.S. and moved to Dubai. I still can’t believe that crap.
And in another comparison involving Germany, the Iraq War has already lasted over half a year longer than the December 1941 - May 1945 U.S. war in Europe. Sheeesh…
I’ve always said Bush is an inefficient Nazi.