Who Said the War Would Pay for Itself?... The
Nation | March 13, 2008
The following quotes were compiled by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky in their capacity as CEO and president of the Institute of Expertology, which has just issued a report on the experts who were wrong about Iraq--before, during and after the invasion--under the title Mission Accomplished! Or, How We Won the War in Iraq; The Experts Speak (Simon & Schuster). Here, the "experts" speak about the costs of war. "Iraq is a very wealthy country. Enormous oil reserves. They can finance,
largely finance the reconstruction of their own country. And I have no
doubt that they will."
"The likely economic effects [of a war in Iraq] would be relatively
small.... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite
small relative to the economic benefits."
"It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute
hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have
to contribute even tens of billions of dollars."
"The costs of any intervention would be very small."
"Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And
so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much
of the burden for their own reconstruction."
"When it comes to reconstruction, before we turn to the American taxpayer,
we will turn first to the resources of the Iraqi government and the international
community."
"There is a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be US
taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people. We are
talking about a country that can really finance its own reconstruction
and relatively soon."
"The United States is very committed to helping Iraq recover from the
conflict, but Iraq will not require sustained aid."
"The allies [have contributed] $14 billion in direct aid."
Actually, only $13 billion was pledged, and on the date Cheney spoke only $1 billion had arrived. As of October 28, 2007, the National Priorities Project estimated that the share of Iraq War costs that had been borne by American taxpayers exceeded $463 billion. --C.C.&V.N. |