The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict

Thursday
March 19, 2009
7:00 pm

Emerson Unitarian Church
4230 Livernois
Troy, MI

March 19, 2009 will mark the sixth anniversary of our country’s occupation of Iraq (and next October will mark the eighth anniversary of the occupation of Afghanistan). We pause this week to observe the exorbitant cost to our nation.

Watch an interview of Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and of Linda Bilmes of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and an expert in government finance. Last year they wrote The Three Trillion Dollar War. The forty-five minute interview was conducted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy Now!, a daily TV/radio news program, airing on over 700 stations. It was the first national broadcast interview after the book's publication.

A discussion of the many issues raised in the video will follow. You get an idea of the issues from economist James Galbraith, who said of the book: “Here you will find what the war has cost: what it costs in money, what it costs in death, what it costs in oil prices and to growth and in neglect of other pressing needs. And you will find detailed with great care, the costs still to come: costs in interest and in debt, and the appalling cost of caring for tens of thousands of injured servicemen and women for the rest of their lives.”

This event will answer the question “Just how much is this war costing us anyhow?” The information presented will be immediately relevant to Afghanistan, where the president may increase the number of troops by 30,000 in the coming months. The video and discussion are particularly timely in light of the current economic downturn.

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