Financial Costs of Iraq War could be $2 Trillion

While the deepest loses from the chaos in Iraq in which American troops participate are of course the deaths of Americans, non-combatant Iraqis, and other internationals, following by the severe life-altering injuries that Americans, non-combatant Iraqis and other internationals sustain, followed by the fact of how many Iraqis have been forced to flee the country or endure years of chaos... even the pure financial cost to the United States is already staggering. Based on recent work by well-regarded economists, using information from the Congressional Budget Office, the likely cost of this war is $2 Trillion. The amount of positive benefit this money could have provided to the people of the world, and to the non-military aspects of the struggle against terrorism, is almost beyond contemplation. (Low estimates are $1.2 Trillion BTW).

For an interesting summary, see this article from the May-June 2007 issue of Harvard Magazine: The $2-Trillion War.

Persistence of Myths - Recent Research Results

On September 4, 2007, the Washington Post ran an article entitled Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach by Shankar Vedantam. Very interesting reports of research on how many people's minds work in terms of associating "truth" with messages they have heard many times, even when many of those times were statements saying the statement itself was incorrect.