Iraq war ends with a $4 trillion IOU

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

Dec. 15, 2011 - 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.

Near the start of the war, the U.S. Defense Department estimated it would cost $50 billion to $80 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was dismissed in 2002 after suggesting the price of invading and occupying Iraq could reach $200 billion.

“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, a senior fellow at American Progress, a Washington, D.C. think tank, and a former assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. read more>>>

No Revenues = No Sacrifice = No Support for the Soldiers and Veterans = DeJa-Vu all over again!!, now a decade long of none nor demand for added to the previous decades!! If under the bush so called religious groups received millions in federal funds Why Not Veterans as two wars raged! Country Must 'Sacrifice' not just Groups Within nor Just Non Profits Fighting for Donations! What part of 'We Serve the Whole Country and not groups within' doesn't the country get?! {no need to answer I already know!}