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| The Grim Numbers: 361,000 Dollars Per American Soldier |
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Thursday, May 04 2006 @ 02:16 PM GMT+5
Contributed by: Floyd
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 In addition to April being a particularly deadly month for U.S. (and Italian) troops in Iraq, some new statistics have appeared regarding the economic costs of the botched invasions.
I continue to believe that these invasions and occupations, in addition to be about control of oil reserves and flexing political muscle in the Middle East, are major components of the largely successful effort by the Neo-CONS to starve domestic social and environmental programs that they associate with socialism, progress and satan's spawn himself, F.D.R.
They are prying open the gap between the uber wealthy and everyone else despite the obvious signs of the damage being done and the real potential for revolt at least on the level of throwing the CON artists out of CONgress in November.
So, latest figures suggest that a minimum of 35,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/
and 2408 American Soldiers have died, the majority of them (2271) since Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Photo Op. on May 1, 2003
US Military Deaths in Afghanistan are at 285 and at least 206 Other Coalition Troops have been killed.
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
At least 300,00 people marched in New York last week and as usual were largely ignored by the corporate media much like Stephen Colberts flurry of sadly hilarious facts at the White House Press Correpsondents Dinner were ignored or condemned by the TeeVee pundits.
from the Here and Now radio program's site:
http://www.here-now.org/shows/2006/05/20060503_9.asp
News stories this week have focused on the high cost of reconstructing Iraq. For instance, we've learned that a $186 million project to build more than 100 health clinics in Iraq has produced only six so far.
But little has been written about the cost of the war itself.
Today (05/03/06) the Senate is expected to pass an emergency spending bill that would allocate $71 billion this year to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the research arm of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, has just released a report to assist lawmakers. It says the military burns through $2 billion a week in Iraq. And that it now costs approximately $361,000 a year per American soldier there.
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In high school, my favorite subject is/was
44 votes | 6 comments
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Another day, another significant toll: British troops and Shiite militiamen clashed Saturday at the scene of a British military helicopter crash that killed four British soldiers in Basra. Shooting broke out after Iraqis hurled stones at British troops and set a British armored vehicle on fire.
British forces using armoured vehicles were met by a hail of stones from the crowd of at least 250 people, who "jumped for joy and raised their fists as a plume of thick smoke rose into the air from the crash site."
Shooting broke out between the British and armed militiamen, and at least two people, including a child, were killed, Khazim said.
Crowds chanted “we are all soldiers of al-Sayed”, a reference to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, an ardent foe of the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.
They still aren't being welcomed as liberators for some reason or other.
A US-led coalition military transport helicopter has crashed while conducting combat operations in eastern Afghanistan, killing all 10 soldiers on board. The military did not give the nationalities or other information about the dead soldiers.
Sources: various wire services