War, Military, Defense

Costs

• Bwwahahahaha... :(  Mitch Daniels (OMB) in 2002: THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE COST; WHITE HOUSE CUTS ESTIMATE OF COST OF WAR WITH IRAQ - New York Times  (12/31/2002)
• The administration's top budget official estimated today that the cost of a war with Iraq could be in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, a figure that is well below earlier estimates from White House officials.
• Cost of war since 2011
• Losing Our Way - Bob Hebert NYT, 3/2011 
• we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home
• What $312 million (MD jackpot) can buy: 1 Day in Afghanistan - baltimoresun.com (3/2011)

Human Costs

• Casualties of War | (2011)  ...a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A seperate investiagtion into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.”
• The Veteran Suicide Epidemic - AlterNet (6/13/2012) http://goo.gl/LlklC -- Now that our troops are actually coming home from Iraq, many are killing themselves. Why?

Libya

• 10 ways Libya 2011 is not like Iraq 2003 Juan Cole (3/2011)

Iraq

• Condi Rice Blind To Hindsight On Iraq: 'It Was A Security Threat' | ThinkProgress (Nov 2, 2011) http://bit.ly/soa3fA 

Aghanistan