This should be heard/watched by Many!

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Economist Linda Bilmes on the True Cost of the US Invasion andOccupation of Iraq

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There is in the Guardian tonight dated Feb 28,2008 an article about a book The Three Trillion Dollar War  being released in the U.K. today written by Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard Professor at the Kennedy School Linda Bilmes. She is the one who gave the report to Congress on the fact that taking care of the wounded soldiers alone from the Iraq war would be one trillion dollars.  It seems as if they got more "curioser" and after being accused of being to "outlandish" in her estimates of the "true cost". Below is excerpts of the article  but you need to go to the link and read the entire piece, it is well worth the time.

I have the authors permission to distribute his writings as a way to advocate for veterans and disabled veterans. I still think DR  
Linda Bilmes of the Harvard Kennedy School has the best solution and if the old veterans organizations are against it, it is because this new way of claims processing will mean veterans will no longer require stodgy old men in VARO offices who are more committed to enlarging the membership rolls than actually caring for and getting the compensation claims of the veterans and their widows completed. DR Bilmes suggestion does away with backed up claims waiting for years for approval, (the current system). In other words the old system hates the new system, despite the fact the new system actually helps disabled veterans and their families.

Well we are down to the final two, Senators Obama and Clinton, the Kodak Theater moment is behind and they both promised to unify the Democratic Party for the General Election by November. It is obvious from the fund raising of Democratic candidates that the nation is jazzed up this year, record turn outs in all the primary states so far, here in South Carolina we had parity turn out with the Republican party for the first time in decades.

South Carolina has been Republican so long it's hard to remember when Democrats actually last ran the state, not since I have lived here any way. I retired here from Georgia in 2003. Had to be near the grand kids  lol. Gives my wife something to do, baby sit.

I have published a few of the questions in this article on OPED News but I will elaborate a few more of them here and my thinking behind them.

I am one of the 2.6 million disabled veterans that draw compensation checks from the Department of Veteran Affairs, approximately 9% of all veterans from military service from all the wars, going back thru history end up with some level of diability from 10% thru 100% plus Special Monthly Compensation (SMC) however the new wars in the Middle East appear to be approaching a level of 15%, an extremely high percentage, either from Traumatic Brain Injuries or PTSD, both more of a problem than previous conflicts.

I was dismayed to read this ElPaso Times news article written by Chris Roberts. The article explains the Department of Veterans Affairs policy of giving preferential treatment to "new" veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans at the head of the line when processing claims for medical treatment, vocational rehabilitation, employment and education benefits.

Excuse me veterans are veterans  and the VA system has always worked on a system where the oldest claims are worked first. The newer claims go to the bottom of the pile and get worked in the order received. The only exceptions were supposed to be terminally ill veterans, and we rarely ever seen them get bumped to the head of the line, many veterans have died awaiting approval of their claims, in some cases the vets have died between approvals and the back pay checks being mailed, and the VA has asked for the checks to be returned, since the veteran died before they could be cashed.

*I host a radio show in San Francisco called Your Call and post info about it when relevant.

Today we’re revisiting a show we recently did about the true financial costs and health effects of the Iraq war. On May 9, UCSF held a symposium to discuss these very issues.

From 1956 to 1965, the Vietnam War cost the U.S. the equivalent of $662 billion in today's dollars, according to the U.S. government's Congressional Research Service.

Four years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the cost of the war as of 9:05 am PST was $429 billion. At this point, there seems to be no end in sight.

For those interested in the true costs of the war in Iraq, the cover-story of this week's issue of the British weekly The New Statesman is a must-read. It is written by Andrew Stephen. For those interested in the impending invasion of Iran, I would recommend his recent article on the subject. The weekly is one of the best magazines available on UK politics and leadership, and it has recently gone from a strictly 'subscription-only' site to one that allows us poor folks to read it on-line.

For space considerations and site relevance, this diary will only discuss the American side of the equation, and if the reader is interested in the UK side, please read the article on their site.