Joel Brinkley
As the congressional debt-reduction "super committee" begins work next week, it had better take into account trillions of dollars in anticipated war costs that no one in
For decades now (and probably much longer) government estimates of war costs strove not to count numerous secondary expenses that result from combat, like veterans' health care -- or the
But a new academic study counts everything and puts the wars' full price at about
The more disturbing finding, however, is that in the coming years the wars threaten to cost the nation another
As I said, no one in
Experts from more than a dozen universities and think tanks researched this new study, Costs of War Since 2001, under the auspices of the
The congressional super committee is supposed to find
While outside experts tally the costs, something the government refuses to do, federal auditors are continuing to find that if you turn over any rock in
In mid-August, a special U.S. military task force found that
No matter what you might think about the justifications for starting the wars, it's hard to argue that they are succeeding. Right now, those two states
Justifications for both wars shifted as circumstances changed. But in both cases
In
Another federal auditor's report found that
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Available at Amazon.com:
Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World
Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East (The Contemporary Middle East)
The End of History and the Last Man
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
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