AP Poll: Leaving Iraq will help economy..

This is from wiredispatch.
Actually the Iraq war is itself a stimulus a type of what is called Military Keynesianism. I suppose what people are thinking is that the money used in Iraq could be better used as a stimulus back at home in other areas than military spending. Or it may be that people are worried about the debt caused by the Iraq war spending. Politicians do not seem to raise this issue.

AP Poll: Leaving Iraq will help economy
AP Poll: Stimulus Checks Welcome, but to Really Help the Economy US Should Leave Iraq
JEANNINE AVERSAAP News
Feb 08, 2008 18:00 EST
The heck with Congress' big stimulus bill. The way to get the country out of recession — and most people think we're in one — is to get the country out of Iraq, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.
Pulling out of the war ranked first among proposed remedies in the survey, followed by spending more on domestic programs, cutting taxes and, at the bottom end, giving rebates to poor people in hopes they'll spend the economy into recovery.
The $168 billion economic rescue package Congress rushed to approval this week includes rebates of $600 to $1,200 for most taxpayers, the hope being that they will spend the money and help revive ailing businesses. President Bush is expected to sign the measure next week. Poor wage-earners, as well as seniors and veterans who live almost entirely off Social Security and disability benefits, would get $300 checks.
However, just 19 percent of the people surveyed said they planned to go out and spend the money; 45 percent said they'd use it to pay bills. And nearly half said what the government really should do is get out of Iraq.
Forty-eight percent said a pullout would help fix the country's economic problems "a great deal," and an additional 20 percent said it would help at least somewhat. Some 43 percent said increasing government spending on health care, education and housing programs would help a great deal; 36 percent said cutting taxes.
"Let's stop paying for this war," said Hilda Sanchez, 44, of Waterford, Calif. "There are a lot of people who are struggling. We can use the money to pay for medical care and help people who were put out of their homes."
The subject of leaving Iraq shows a sharp partisan divide — 65 percent of Democrats think it would help the economy a lot, but only 18 percent of Republicans think so.
Just 29 percent of people think putting more money in the hands of the poor would help a great deal in fixing the country's economic problems.
According to many economists, the lower people are on the income ladder, the more probable it is that they will spend a rebate and do it quickly — a shot in the arm for the ailing economy.
In the poll, 61 percent said they think the economy is already in a recession.
"Things are bad, but it will get a lot worse," said Jim Sims, 60, of Greer, S.C.
And Nanette Dahlin, 52, of St. Louis Park, Minn., said the economic stimulus package "would only make a recession less damaging."
The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of last year. Some economists, like the majority of poll respondents, say it may actually be shrinking now, given the strains from a persistent housing slump and a painful credit crunch. The worry is that people and businesses will hunker down further and pull back their spending, sending the economy into a tailspin.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has gotten more forceful in cutting interest rates to spur people to buy more and to energize businesses. And now Republicans, Democrats and the White House have shown rare cooperation in approving relief.
Rebate checks could start showing up in mailboxes in May. However, Sanchez is typical is saying the money will "go automatically to bills." Thirty-two percent said they would save or invest the rebate. Said Sims: "I'm hoping to hold onto it."
Just 19 percent — like Dahlin — said they would spend it, while 4 percent said they would donate it to charity.
Paying off bills or saving the money won't give the economy a quick boost, though it may well be a wise financial decision for many people who are up to their eyeballs in bills.
"What is good for the economy as a whole — spending a rebate — is not the best idea at an individual household level if you are buried in debt," said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. "Issuing rebate checks to give a boost to consumer spending amounts to a Band-Aid over the much bigger problem of consumer debt burdens," he said.
With Wall Street in turmoil, the top economic worry for poll respondents was seeing their nest eggs shrink. Fifty-nine percent said they were worried "a lot" or "some" about seeing the value of stocks and retirement investments drop. Those approaching retirement fretted the most.
Nearly half — 46 percent — said they were worried about being able to pay their bills. This is especially a concern for people whose household incomes are under $50,000, and for minorities. Twenty-eight percent most feared losing their jobs; minorities and those with a high school education or less were especially concerned.
Also, 48 percent of homeowners polled worried that the value of their homes would drop. The housing bust has led to record-high foreclosures, and weaker home values have made people feel less wealthy.
Who deserves most of the blame for the economy's troubles?
More than half — 56 percent — pointed the finger at mortgage lenders. Forty-four percent said Bush deserves a lot of the blame. After that come Congress, Wall Street, consumers themselves and in last place the Federal Reserve.
The Fed has the public's confidence that it will be able to right the economy.
More than half — 55 percent — said they have a great deal or some confidence in Fed to turn things around. Forty-one percent said that about Congress, only 28 percent about Bush.
In fact, economic problems have contributed to pulling the president's approval ratings to all-time lows. Only 29 percent approve of his handling of the economy, the lowest mark yet in this polling. Bush's overall job-approval rating slid to 30 percent, also a record low.
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted Monday through Wednesday this week and involved telephone interviews with 1,006 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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Helicopter manufacturers upbeat!

It seems that more and more helicopters are being lost in Iraq. These are very costly to replace but no doubt manufacturers will be collateral profiteers from the actions of the insurgents. As another post shows the money is forthcoming for new supplies for the Iraq war.

Mortar rounds hit helicopters at US base By HAMID AHMED, Associated Press Writer
Thu May 17, 10:00 AM ET



BAGHDAD - Mortar rounds hit a U.S. Air Force base north of Baghdad on Thursday, destroying one helicopter and damaging nine others, police said.



The attack at Taji, a major Air Force on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, occurred about 2 a.m., the police said.

"There was an indirect fire attack on the base at Taji which resulted in damage to some aircraft," the military said. Indirect fire is a term the military generally uses to describe rocket or mortar attacks.

The attack destroyed one helicopter and damaged nine others, the police said.

An Iraqi civilian who works at the base said he saw about 16 damaged helicopters, some of them set on fire by the attack. The worker spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Many U.S. Black Hawk helicopters are based at Taji, including some equipped with medical equipment and manned by medics to rescue wounded U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in the Baghdad area.

Sunni insurgents have long been active in the area around Taji

More on Iraq war budget

Nothing is included about the cost of sending troops back home! The Democrats do not seem to be doing much about defunding the war. Non-binding resolutions are not likely to have much effect on Bush. Bush is surging on full speed ahead!

Bush to request hefty Iraq war funds By Caren Bohan and Richard Cowan
Thu Feb 1, 6:40 PM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will request slightly more than $100 billion to cover war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of this year and an even larger amount for fiscal 2008 that begins on October 1, congressional sources said on Thursday.



The administration, which will submit the war cost proposals along with its annual budget on Monday, will provide details of its war spending plans to try to placate critics who have accused it of using a shadow budget to fund the war.

For the current fiscal year, the White House will ask Congress to approve an additional $93 billion for the Defense Department to conduct the two wars and about $7 billion for State Department activities, a Senate aide said.

Including other items, the request will total "a little over $100 billion," according to the Senate aide. That would come on top of $70 billion Congress already approved for the wars this year.

For 2008, the administration will ask for an amount "larger than the $100 billion in the fiscal 2007 request," the Senate aide said.

House and Senate aides said the administration was trying to detail the 2008 costs in advance, responding to complaints from Congress about the long line of "emergency" spending bills that have mostly funded the Iraq war since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

BIGGEST SO FAR

At about $100 billion, the fiscal 2007 emergency request would be the biggest so far.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated Bush's planned troop buildup could cost at least double the administration's initial estimate and involve more than twice the number of troops.

The price tag could reach about $13 billion for a four-month mission, the nonpartisan CBO said. The roughly 20,000 combat soldiers Bush said he was going to deploy to Iraq might have to be augmented by 28,000 support troops, it said.

A U.S. defense official said the Pentagon did not believe the CBO's figure for support troops was realistic.

"Our estimate is that it would be far less than their worst-case scenario," commented the official, who said he would not comment on the record or offer an alternative figure as military planners were still working on their estimates.

In January, the Bush administration estimated a cost of $5.6 billion to dispatch 21,500 troops.

A Bush administration official said details of both years' war spending proposals would be provided in the budget book outlining the 2008 spending plans.

It also will include a forecast for war spending in fiscal 2009 but not beyond that. "That's about as far out as you can realistically project," the official said.

In a letter to Bush in December, three lawmakers said the use of emergency bills had created an "ever-expanding shadow budget" that was obscuring Congress's oversight process and skewing budget deficit projections.

It was signed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record) of North Dakota and House of Representatives Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, both Democrats, and New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg (news, bio, voting record), senior Budget Committee Republican.

Administration officials say they do not object to greater transparency but are using emergency bills to avoid having the costs viewed as part of the Pentagon's permanent budget. If such costs were incorporated into the main Pentagon budget, it would be politically difficult to scale them back when it is time to do so.

But the Bush administration hopes plenty of details on the spending plans will satisfy congressional demands.

"We're going to try to be much more transparent on the costs of the war," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray)

Surge costs are triple estimates

I am surprised that the cost of the war so far does not seem to be hurting the US economy. It must be increasing the debt considerably. If foreign dollar holders such as China and Saudi Arabia become alarmed I just wonder if there won't be big problems.


Cost of troop surge already higher
By James Rosen
McClatchy Newspapers
1 February 2007
WASHINGTON - President Bush's dispatch of 21,500 more troops to Iraq will cost as much as $10 billion this year, triple the administration's price tag, the Congressional Budget Office said Thursday.

A CBO report requested by three House committee chairmen said the Bush administration's estimated cost of $3.2 billion doesn't take into account a complement of 15,000 to 28,000 support troops and other personnel, which it said will boost the cost significantly.

"CBO's report concludes that the cost of the president's plan to surge troops will be higher than previously indicated, both in dollar terms and in the burdens it places on our military," said House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat.

The troop increase will cost an extra $7 billion to $10 billion this year alone, with the price tag reaching $49 billion if the added forces remain in Iraq for two years, according to the CBO analysis.

Spratt, one of the three lawmakers who asked for the CBO report, said Congress has appropriated $379 billion to date for the Iraq war. Bush is expected to send Congress as early as next week an emergency spending bill for $100 billion in war costs, Spratt said, with about $80 billion slated for Iraq.

Costs of Iraq war soar: 8.4 billion a month

While so called entitlement programs such as medicare-and also the medical and disability benefits of the five hundred plus amputees mentioned in a previous article- are regarded as a danger to the economy the cost of the military budget and illegal wars are ignored.

Pentagon sees U.S. war cost in Iraq rising
Thu 18 Jan 2007 23:35:17 GMT
By Richard CowanWASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The steadily rising Iraq war price tag will reach about $8.4 billion a month this year, Pentagon spokesmen said on Thursday, as heavy replacement costs for lost, destroyed and aging equipment mount.The Pentagon has been estimating last year's costs for the increasingly unpopular war at about $8 billion a month, having increased from a monthly "burn rate" of around $4.4 billion during the first year of fighting in fiscal 2003.During testimony at a House Budget Committee hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said that nearly four years into the war, the Pentagon's war costs were rising because it was having to replace big-ticket items such as helicopters, airplanes and armored vehicles that are wearing out or were lost in combat."We have a backlog and are seeing an increase," England told the panel.When factoring in U.S. combat costs in Afghanistan, the Pentagon will spend about $9.7 billion a month during the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30, according to Pentagon spokesmen.Early next month, the administration is expected to ask Congress for a further $100 billion in "emergency" war money, on top of the $70 billion already approved for this year. The request comes as President George W. Bush has sketched out an increase of 21,500 U.S. troops in Iraq that could cost about $5.6 billion.House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat, said he hoped Congress could avoid recurring emergency funding bills for the war. "We would like to get a better grasp of the cost of the Iraq war and the global war on terrorism -- a way of accounting of costs to date and projecting costs to come."Since fiscal 2001, Congress has approved $503 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other aspects of the U.S. "global war on terrorism," according to Congressional Budget Office testimony. Of that, $344 billion has gone for military, diplomatic and other security costs in Iraq, the CBO said.Most of the funds have been provided on an emergency basis, outside regular budget procedures. Critics say that obscures the true cost of the war and results in less congressional oversight.'RESIDUAL TALE'Democrats won control of Congress in elections last November due largely to the Iraq war's unpopularity. England said the financial burden of the conflict would persist for some time.He said even after the war ends, and he did not estimate when that would be, there would be two years of a "residual tail" of costs for rebuilding the military.Democrats and Republicans on the budget panel grilled England on whether the Pentagon was slipping money for expensive, nonemergency projects into the emergency war funds requests.Specifically, they inquired about reports Bush would ask for money to pay for two "Joint Strike Fighter" airplanes that are several years from being ready for combat, along with money for ballistic missiles and Navy aircraft repairs and procurement that is unrelated to Iraq combat.England would not comment specifically on the upcoming request for emergency war money. But he said that when equipment was lost in Iraq, it was not replaced with "something old," but with new equipment.Democrats have promised tougher oversight of defense spending, while challenging Bush's plans to broaden the American war effort in Iraq.

Another milestone in Iraq

No doubt this will add considerably to the future costs of the Iraq conflict as the medical costs will last for decades.


A Grim Milestone: 500 Amputees
Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007 By MICHAEL WEISSKOPF/WASHINGTON



The giant transport planes unload their sad cargo at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, the first stop home for the most seriously injured Americans of the Iraq war. Arriving virtually every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday nights for the past four years, the parade of wounded warriors may be one of the most predictable events in an otherwise unruly conflict.
Last Tuesday marked another grim milestone: the arrival of the 500th amputee. Army officials said the victim, a 24-year-old corporal, lost both legs in a roadside bomb explosion on January 12. He was treated at the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, before landing at Andrews and being taken to Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
The corporal became the newest resident of Ward 57, the hospital's renowned amputee center that has swelled with casualties since 2003. Limb-loss has occurred twice as often in Iraq as in any conflict of the past century, except for Vietnam, for which there are no good statistics. The 500 major amputations — toes and fingers aren't counted — represent 2.2% of the 22,700 U.S. troops wounded in action. But the number rises to 5% in the category of soldiers whose wounds prevent them returning to duty.
Despite the devastating loss, amputation is actually a blessing for many Ward 57 patients. That's because they wouldn't have survived in past wars without today's body armor to protect vital organs and better-equipped medics to quickly stop hemorrhaging and deliver the wounded to hospitals. The extraordinary rates of survival in this war — 9 of every 10 soldiers wounded make it, compared to 7.5 of 10 in Vietnam — explains the larger number of casualties who survive with severe and lasting disabilities, including loss of limbs.
The roadside bomb that wounded the 500th amputee is the signature weapon of the Iraq war, racking up the kind of body count caused by heavy artillery in past conflicts. Usually hidden in the road and detonated by remote control, these so-called improvised explosive devices release powerful blasts and shrapnel as Humvees pass by, carrying soldiers well-protected in all but their dangling limbs. "What takes the brunt of it are the arms and legs," said John Greenwood, historian of the Army Surgeon General's office.
As the U.S. military has upgraded the armor of its Humvees, the annual number of amputees has decreased since a record high of 156 in 2004. But Iraqi insurgents have responded with bigger bombs that cause greater devastation. Experts say this has contributed to the increase in multiple amputees. Last year, nearly a quarter of the 128 amputees lost more than one limb, compared with about 13% in the first full year of the conflict.
This war will produce the first generation of veterans in bionic arms and legs, a legacy that may seem most pronounced for upper extremity amputees. It is relatively rare to see Americans missing hands or arms; they represent only 5% of civilian amputees in the U.S. But nearly a quarter of those who lost limbs in Iraq have come home in that condition.