How much did the Iraq war actually cost?

War is always, always wrong. No one ever wins other than the undertakers.

 

Crosby is that you?

 

JackFlash, I'll respond when I have a lot more time. Sorry.

Rush, and you end up with links that don't work ; )

 

I can answer this now.

The simple answer is: No.
Blair won one more term after the invasion of Iraq.
He chose to give it up in the end.
I think that pissed a lot of people off...much to the disgust of a lot of people/the media...It wasn't "the war" it wasn't scandle/sleaze it was just one persons choice.
I'd imagine the calculation was that he could not win a fourth term, so decided to hand over power to someone who would continue with "New Labour" and it's goals.
It turned out he chose the wrong person to support.

 

I never did understand England's political system very well, but doesn't a PM usually step down when he/she looses the confidence of the majority in Parliment? And, don't the members of Parliment represent the voters concerns?

Didn't he get a "no confidence vote," or was that someone else; or, did he step down to avoid it?

I hear you saying that the citizens of England support the Iraq war, or at least the politicians running it, but that's not what the news indicates here in the States. I gather that your economy is being dragged down like ours is by this war and people on both sides of the pond see more negatives coming from it than positives.

.

 

yes the uk is being dragged down

they have raised the VAT (a goods and services tax on almost everything) from a crippling 17.5 percent to 20 percent (to pay for the war)

the religious right is too strong in the uk now the only hope the uk has now is for total economic collapse otherwise they'll still be in the middle east 20 years from now.

out

 

Not as much as Obama's stimulus plan which did absolutely nothing!

 

So, we should not have fought back in World War II? We should not have declared war on the Japanese after they bombed Pearl Harbor.

We should not have fought the Revolutionary War to gain our Independence from King George?

I definitely think we need to fight these terrorists, but I don't know how to get it done. I do think these wars could be done differently, because so much money was spent, but it is very easy to criticize from where we are sitting. So, I can't opine on the merits of these wars.

I love your Wombat, by the way.

 

check the facts again, many people are still working who would not have been; and many are working who were not. It was too little and not put in place fast enough.

Check the other side of the isle, you know, the ones who are cheering for his failure; and bare in mind that his failure is our failure. So, who are the Republicans actually working against? (that would be us)

.

 

Facts are, in Jan. 09(first stimulus signed) unemployment was at 7.7%, Aug. '10 it's up to 9.6% peaking at 10.1%

Now 20 months later another $800 billion bill signed,nice.

 

Gee, if that's all the facts on the table, it looks like the stimulus caused unemployment to go up about 2.5%. but, there were some jobs created by it, soooo.

An accurate statement would be that no one can say with any certainty that things would have gotten worse without it, or better with more of it. And who knows, if the Republicans had been on board instead of abandoning the sinking ship, maybe we would be out of this mess now. I think the problems we have require our entire government body to work for a solution, not just slightly more than half.

When one party is working hard to solve the problems and the other is working even harder to see that they don't, what do you expect will happen?

.

 

Sorry have little time at moment to contribute to discussions, although I am still popping in to read, but I just had to step in here on one point.

Odon’s analyses of Blair’s departure is way too simplistic

Blair didn’t chose to go he was pushed out, because the Iraq war had made him and his position vulnerable.

There were many rumours and hints that he would step down after the 2005 election and Blair even said he would.

After he seemed to renege on that promise in the summer of 2006 he faced the real possibility that he would suffer Margret Thatcher’s fate and be ignominiously kicked out as leader and so not long after he made a speech saying he would go within a year and he did.

Oh and I have heard some supporters of the war claim that because Blair and New Labour won the 2005 election somehow this means the British people supported the Iraq War, it doesn’t.

The war issue although there, wasn’t a major issue because the two major parties New Labour and Conservatives had very similar policies if anything the Conservatives were more hawkish (nearly all the Tories MP’s voted for war while 139 Labour MP’s voted against it).

Many on the left held their noses and voted Labour basically because the alternative was worse.

 

How many people are working who would otherwise not be? two or three hundred? Maybe. And they were mostly given go'ment bureaucracy jobs, right? Hmm, that's great. And we only had to spend some 800 Billion. Awesome.

Didn't unemployment go up to 9.6% in August. Didn't Obama say unemployment would not get above 8%. You say it was too little to late, but if that were true, wouldn't the stimulus be working a little? Wouldn't the economy be getting better slowly, rather than getting worse slowly. At least it's not getting worse quickly.

 

^^^

now i am no fan of the banking industry, but perhaps the question might be:

how many more people would be out of work [or worse] if the banks had been allowed to fail?

 

While it is true that no one can say what would have happened without the stimulus, chances are that things would have been better. Because, even though there may have been some jobs created, more jobs would likely have been created if businesses were not scared of what the government is going to do to them. All those billions that the big businesses are accused of hanging on to. Well they are worried about the big taxes they may have to pay. If the dems would stop all their spending those companies could hire some people.

It's not that the Republicans are standing in the way of progress, it's that the Republicans are trying to stop a BAD IDEA. Republicans realize that the federal government is incapable of effectively using our money.

I do however agree that if the big companies wouldn't pay the executives $100 million a year, they might have some money to hire some new employees. But the government has no right to tell those companies how to do business.

Keynes was wrong, my friend. It may sound arrogant for me to say that, me, a nobody saying a respected economist was wrong. But, it is my opinion that Keynes was wrong. You can not spend your way out of a recession. The private sector will dig us out, but the government has to get out of their way.

 

Our political system is fairly simple but made difficult by those involved and those who comment on it for a living.

The Government can have a vote of no confidence...and a party leader can too (It is a different process to oust the government - in a vote of no confidence.)
The last time it occured:
1979: Early election as Callaghan defeated
Prime Minister James Callaghan has lost a parliamentary vote of confidence by a minority of one - forcing him to call an early general election.
The vote of "no confidence" was brought by opposition leader Margaret Thatcher.

The House of Commons carried the Conservative motion by 311 votes to 310 making Mr Callaghan the first Prime Minister since Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 to be forced into an election by the chamber.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/28/newsid_2531000/2531007.stm

You'll have to do your own research why the last 52 Prime ministers left office.
But, I do believe Tony Blair was only one of a few who left because they wanted to, and there wasn't a particular outside reason why.

No comment.

There were attempts (or an attempt), but it takes - I believe - 79 MPs to force a debate where the party leader can be ousted as party leader.
I do believe there were attempts from the very begining of his premiership, as he wasn't left wing enough or socialist enough for many Labour "activists"...(or the left wing media).

Where have I said that?
I'm not quite sure where I have implied that, sir.
To a certain degree I agree with this: Balbus: "...I have heard some supporters of the war claim that because Blair and New Labour won the 2005 election somehow this means the British people supported the Iraq War, it doesn’t."
I think in 2005 the polls had the support at pretty much 50-50.
I was just saying it wasn't a large factor, apparently, to oust him at the ballot box.

You can read this in the left wing media...
I'm not quite sure how true it is...if at all.
Just because it is on the front page of some of the newspapers doesn't make it true or valid...as the media seem to be drifting further into opinion over fact.

It's certainly true more negatives are being reported than positives.
Saying something positive=Warmonger (in some peoples opinion).

Perhaps. But I do think a whole narrative was being written by many, and they were angry it wasn't being played out...so they played it out themselves.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle of my simplicity and your complexity.
I guess: "Blair went because he wanted to" isn't that exciting.

 

the rest at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/opinion/06krugman.html

 

Where do you get your news? You seem to have a distorted view of what is happening. When President Obama took office, we were loosing something like half a million jobs a month. Shortly after his stimulus, we began to gain jobs, until now. I suspect the oil spill in the Gulf may have had a lot to do with that.

It's easy to criticize the Captain who comes aboard a sinking ship, but do you have better ideas on how to keep it afloat? Do you really want to put the Republicans in charge so they can sink it again?

.

 

Where have you been? It was the deregulation of big business and their misdeeds that got us into this mess to start with. I hate to burst your bubble, but they don't give a shit what happens to you, they don't care whether you have a job or not. They're back to making their millions on stocks, bonds and secret securities.

You're espousing the same policies that got us to where we are. Haven't you learned anything?

.

 

You keep saying after the first stimulus "we began to gain jobs" could you please show us where we gained? Unemployment has been on a steady climb since Obama took office and doesn't look like it's headed down anytime soon.

Unemployment went down during and after gulf oil spill,try again.