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 enlarge | Authors: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Linda J. Bilmes
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $9.25
You Save: $13.70 (60%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  32 reviews
Sales Rank: 38390
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.3
ISBN: 0393067017
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.704431
EAN: 9780393067019
ASIN: 0393067017
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Mistaken assumption on part of some commenters March 19, 2008
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
It's an assumption--and probably a bad one--that had not these monies been and will be spent on the war(s), Congress/the President would have chosen to borrow/spend equivalent sums on alternative and presumptively more worthy initiatives. I see little evidence for this.
At what cost? March 19, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
Both authors of this book are correct when they say that no amount of money can value the cost of a human life. Considering the amount that has been lost in the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq by the American government and its "coalition of the willing," their statement almost seems banal. No amount of rhetoric, no matter how sophisticated, can justify the initiation of force against another human being without provocation. It is a moral axiom that such an initiation is the ultimate evil, and no accountant's spreadsheet is going to be able to add up the costs of unprovoked violence. Even if the illegal and immoral war against Iraq only cost one dollar, it would not matter. It is not the cost of war that is at issue, but rather whether it has moral justification. A war is to be fought only for purposes of defense against an armed attack. The accountants can then inform relevant parties what the costs will be, and then practical decisions will have to be made about the scale of the resulting conflict.
There is some value to this book though if one takes a pragmatic view. The extreme numbers that the authors report on the cost of the immoral and illegal war against Iraq may encourage more to take measures to end it. It is also has value in the sense that it gives the reader insight into the accounting system of the U.S. Federal government, and how difficult it is to obtain accurate information on spending activities. For this reason the authors described themselves as being "sleuths" rather than analysts in a recent public forum on their book. Their discipline in obtaining the relevant information is to be commended, and such investigative activities should be emulated whenever possible, if only to obtain a more accurate picture of the workings of governmental bureaucracy. In addition, their recommendations on veteran care, if implemented, will assist greatly in granting future veterans the medical assistance they require after coming home from legitimate wars. Their current situation is deplorable, especially if compared to the kind of care that those who ranted on about their need to go to war have access to. The latter class of individuals was keen on rhetoric but short on intestinal fortitude.
One could also take the book as being a tutorial on the current operational readiness of the Armed Forces of the United States. It gives insight into just how much it takes to fund a war, and this information is extremely valuable if a legitimate war is to be fought in the future. High technology, logistics, and medical care are to be weighed in, as much as future medical care for injured veterans. One can only hope that this will be the last book that estimates the costs of a war, but with political eyes currently looking east of Iraq, this seems doubtful.
 Mind Boggling Numbers Concealed by Hide and Seek Accounting March 11, 2008
57 out of 60 found this review helpful
I generally have a hard time dealing with writing that deals with accounting. I was not a business major, and it is hard for me to follow some of the monetary flows. It was startling to me when I discovered that this book was very easy to follow and was written for the average person. It is well written, with wonderful documentation and an easy to read and follow style.
The numbers presented are mind boggling and numbing. How do you account for such huge numbers, and why haven't we known before that the numbers were this big? The answer lies, primarily, in accounting tricks used by the government to hide certain expenses of to put them off onto other budgets so that the true cost could never be accurately accounted for. It's quite a statement that the DOD flunked its last 7 audits; a trick that would send private company executives to prison.
If you really want to know what the war will cost, where each of those costs is hidden and what those costs consist of, then this book is well worth the money. Every American should read this book now, before the election, to truly understand how we have been hoodwinked.
Incredible, Yet Credible and Comprehensible! March 4, 2008
134 out of 140 found this review helpful
Three trillion dollars for the war in Iraq is an incredible amount, almost beyond comprehension, and certainly far beyond the figures provided by the Bush administration. Yet this total is made both credible and comprehensible through the documentation of Joseph Stiglitz (2001 Nobel Prize-winner in economics, and Professor at Columbia) and Linda Bilmes, Harvard University expert on public policy and finance.
Compelling alternative uses for the money are numerous. For example, we could have put Social Security on sound financial footing for a fraction of that cost, and avoided the nearly 4,000 American deaths (plus $500,000/death benefits) and 100,000 estimated Iraqi deaths - plus an untold number of seriously wounded and their long-term disability and health costs. (Stiglitz found that 40% of Gulf War troops were declared disabled, and that was only a one month war; he sees Pentagon estimates of Gulf War II wounded and disabled as grossly understated, and documents that conclusion. Another key point - peak expenditures for WWII veterans did not occur until 1993; thus this war will affect spending decades into the future.) Alternatively, America's trillion dollar+ infrastructure needs could be met with only half that expense.
Other costs include skyrocketing re-enlistment bonuses (up to $150,000 - their alternative is personal safety or much higher-paid private security work), the extra costs of using reserve and guard troops, up to $1,222/day for private security guards to replace servicemen paid less than one-sixth that, lost billions to reconstruct Iraq and spent in non-competitive bidding, and massive equipment replacement costs.
Then there are the opportunity costs associated with spending the money overseas, with no return to the American economy, increased pressure on the dollar, and the likely increased cost of oil. Finally, what about the interest costs of financing this war with debt, and our increased reliance on foreign nations holding that debt?
Supposedly this war is being fought to promote democracy. Yet, as Stiglitz points out, it is being mostly sold and funded through hiding the costs from the public. Continuing our presence in Iraq may, with interest, raise the total to $6-7 trillion. Meanwhile, bin Laden roams free, and even more Islamicists hate us.
"The Three Trillion Dollar War" is MUST reading.
America exports it's corruption to Iraq March 3, 2008
76 out of 84 found this review helpful
This book not only describes the cost of the Iraq War long term, but explains how billions of dollars were wasted in Iraq due to the total corruption of the Bush administration, starting with Bush refusing to allow open bidding on the contracts to rebuild Iraq. Those contract then went to his or the Vice President's cronies. In addition the Bush administration makes no mention of the long term costs of the injured soldiers returning from Iraq. Bush has also lied to the American people about the number of injured soldiers and after being caught on the government's own web site, they took the site down.
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