Recent Posts
- Veterans Disability Costs exceed Stiglitz-Bilmes estimates
- New CBO study confirms high cost of treating new veterans with PTSD and TBI
- What have we learned from Iraq?
- Five Painful Lessons from the Iraq War
- Defense Dept is now the ONLY federal government agency to flunk its audit
- Ten Years in Afghanistan
- New Op-ed in Los Angeles Times by Bilmes and Stiglitz
- Recent commentary by the authors on the costs of 9/11
- Rising US death toll in Afghanistan: lessons from history
- Gloomy reports detail huge fraud, waste and corruption in contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan
- NY Times looks at rising cost of veterans care
- Brown University study estimates cost of wars at $3.7 Trillion since 2001
- Congress considers legislation that would require estimates of the true cost of war
- Stiglitz Bilmes new book chapter in the Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict
- Wars are one of the main reasons why the US debt is so high
Archives
Sep
7
40% of US troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan troops require medical treatment
Filed Under Casualty Reports & FOIA, Medical Topics, Veterans | Leave a Comment
The latest information from Veterans for Common Sense shows a continued increase in the number of veterans who are seeking medical care from VA hospitals and clinics, and another steep increase in the number of returning troops who are diagnosed with mental health conditions.
The latest numbers show tha4 347,750 (40% of all patients) have been treated at VA medical facilities.
147,744 have been treated for mental health problems, of whom about half have been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). For complete records, see:
Apr
22
The Three Trillion Dollar War
Filed Under Academic Papers & Journals, Casualty Reports & FOIA, Latest News & Scandals, Recent Press, Veterans, Videos, War & The Economy | Leave a Comment
This website is inspired by the book The Three Trillion Dollar War and will continue to tell the story of the costs of this war. Apart from its tragic human toll, the Iraq War will be staggeringly expensive in financial terms. In The Three Trillion Dollar War, Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes cast a spotlight on expense items that have been hidden from the U.S. taxpayer, including not only big-ticket items like replacing military equipment (being used up at six times the peacetime rate) but also the cost of caring for thousands of wounded veterans—for the rest of their lives. Shifting to a global focus, the authors investigate the cost in lives and economic damage within Iraq and the region. Finally, with the chilling precision of an actuary, the authors measure what the U.S. taxpayer’s money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the U.S. economy. Written in language as simple as the details are disturbing, this book will forever change the way we think about the war.
- Buy the book here.
- Read more about Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes.
- Selected book reviews and articles about The Three Trillion Dollar War.
- Interviews with Stiglitz and Bilmes about The Three Trillion Dollar War.
- “War at Any Cost? The Total Economic Costs of the War Beyond the Federal Budget,” written testimony for the Joint Economic Committee, February 28, 2008 (PDF)
- “The $3 Trillion War,” an excerpt from the book, in Vanity Fair, April 2008 issue.
