In his September 26, 2003 letter to Bush campaign supporters, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie yet again demonstrates the willingness of the Republican Party leadership to engage in bald lies in order to defend Bush’s missteps.
After referring to criticism of a President as “hate speech,” Ed Gillespie lays down the mission of the recipients, conservative political activists called “GOP Team Leaders”: “As Team Leaders, we are dependent upon you to make sure communities across this great nation get the FACTS.” It’s too bad that Gillespie’s “FACTS” are not, in fact, factual.
In order to diffuse criticism of the mounting costs of Bush’s War in Iraq, Gillespie says “Compared to similar conflicts the cost of fighting the war in Iraq is small. The cost for this war amounts to approximately 0.5% of Gross Domestic Product, compared with 130% for World War II and 15% for the Korean War.”
Gillespie gets these estimates from an article entitled The Economic Consequences of a War with Iraq by Yale Economist William D. Nordhaus. Reading his Table 2 and surrounding text in which the figures for Korea and World War II are calculated, we find to arrive at this figure, the total cost of the war (no matter how long it takes) is divided by the average annual Gross Domestic Product during the war. This tells us how to make a parallel calculation.
So, is it true that the cost of Bush’s War in Iraq is only 0.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP)? In order to figure this out, we need to know what the Gross Domestic Product is. We can’t know for 2003, since that year is still underway. A reasonable guess would be to go with the U.S. GDP for 2002, which was 10.4462 trillion dollars (source: Bureau of Economic Analysis at http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/gdplev.xls). How much has Bush’s War in Iraq cost so us so far? Let’s be generous and not count the costs involved in long-term medical care for wounded American soldiers, or the cost of buying new bombs, missiles and bullets to replace the ones that are being used, or any other indirect costs. No, to be nice to Gillespie let’s make an absurdly conservative calculation of costs and just focus on the costs of war having directly to do with Iraq: invasion, occupation and reconstruction. $79 Billion were appropriated by the U.S. Congress for Bush’s War in Iraq in the spring of 2003. Bush has already asked for another $71 Billion just for Iraq (the $87 Billion figure is widely quoted, but includes continuing multibillion-dollar costs for Afghanistan). That makes for $150 Billion already, which is 1.5% of the last available annual U.S. GDP. That’s three times Gillespie’s figure, not including any indirect but real costs of the Iraq war. Ed Gillespie reads the newspapers. He knows these numbers. Ed Gillespie is lying.
Of course, the war in Iraq is, unfortunately, not over. A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators estimates that we’ll be in Iraq for five years. Let’s be extra nice and not only ignore the indirect costs of Bush’s Iraq War but also assume that the cost of Bush’s war will be cut in half each year, so that in year 2 we’ll only need to fork out $35 Billion, then $17 Billion in year 3, then $8 Billion, then $4 Billion, and then nothing at all afterward (riiiight…). This brings the total cost of the war to $214 Billion, or 2% of annual U.S. GDP. That’s four times Gillespie’s figure, making the nicest of assumptions on Gillespie’s behalf. Gillespie isn’t a fool. Even to his own political shock troops, Gillespie is a liar.
(Sources: CNN September 17, 2003, Washington Times September 25, 2003, Reuters , Bureau of Economic Analysis, The Economic Consequences of a War with Iraq by William Nordhaus)
