NEW YORK - Just in case New
Yorkers have missed the fact that huge wads of their
(and all other Americans') tax dollars are being shipped
offshore to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq, a
flashy new billboard went up in Times Square this week
that keeps them in the picture. The billboard, which was
to go live at 11am New York time on Wednesday, features
a constantly updated clock counting the cost of the Iraq
war, similar to the former national-debt clock.
The clock, according to a news release from the
Center for American Progress think-tank, was to start at
US$134.5 billion and tick upward at the rate of $122,820
per minute. That's $177 million per day.
The new
billboard, put up by the non-profit organization Project
Billboard and supported by the think-tank, coincided
with a report by the center analyzing the cost of the
Iraq war, and detailing how the $144.4 billion pledged
to date could have been spent on multiple projects
designed to make Americans safer at home and stronger
abroad.
That $144.4 billion figure,
incidentally, is almost three times the estimated $30
billion that it cost to keep Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein contained for the 12 years following the first
Gulf War, according to US Defense Department figures.
The "Opportunity Cost of the Iraq War" report
says that for the cost of the Iraq war to date, the
United States could have undertaken 15 major new
projects to strengthen its security in the world and at
home. These include:
Adding two new divisions to the US Army.
Putting 100,000 new police officers on US streets.
Doubling US Special Operations forces.
Undertaking significant improvements to safeguard
ports.
Funding important initiatives to safeguard loose
nuclear weapons.
"Whether you are a critic or
supporter of President [George W] Bush's policy in Iraq,
two points are clear: Iraq was a war of choice, and the
United States is bearing virtually all of the cost,"
said John Podesta, president and chief executive officer
of the Center for American Progress. "At a time when
there are many competing security priorities - ranging
from strengthening our conventional military to securing
weapons-grade nuclear material around the world, to
protecting our ports and chemical plants from terrorist
attack to putting more police on the street - it's
important to recognize the opportunity cost of the
choice to invade Iraq at the time and in the manner that
we did."
The Center for American Progress is a
"research and educational institute dedicated to
promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures
opportunity for all". Podesta was chief of staff under
former US president Bill Clinton.
Deborah
Rappaport, spokesperson for Project Billboard, said: "We
feel it is vital that citizens be aware of this
considerable expenditure [on the Iraq campaign] at this
important time in our nation's history. What better
place than in the billboard capital of the world?"
So far, the war has cost the United States
$144.4 billion, including $25 billion in the Bush
administration's 2005 defense budget signed into law
this month. An additional $60 billion is expected in a
supplemental request after the November elections.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
necessitated an increase in homeland-security funding -
the Bush administration's request for the coming fiscal
year is $47.5 billion. However, according to the Center
for American Progress, many homeland-security priorities
are underfunded or unfunded - port security,
airline-cargo screening, and community policing
programs.
More could also be done, says the
center's report, to secure or eliminate nuclear weapons,
material and technology to prevent terrorists from
developing and exploding nuclear or dirty bombs. "While
progress is being made in Afghanistan," the report
continued, "increased aid faster will give democracy its
best chance of taking hold and help eliminate the
flourishing drug trade in Afghanistan that funds global
terrorist activities. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
have taken their toll on US troops. A larger army and
more Special Operations Forces would take some of the
current strain off the National Guard and reserves and
improve the military's ability to eliminate actual
terrorist safe havens in the future. These are just a
few proposals that would have represented a better
investment in America's security than the $144.4 billion
Iraq 'war of choice'."
The report broke down the
$144.4 billion to see how it could have otherwise be
spent on improved security in the United States. The
figures included $7.5 billion to safeguard US ports, $4
billion toward upgrading the US Coast Guard fleet, and
$2 billion to improve cargo security.
"The Coast
Guard estimates that $7.5 billion is needed over 10
years to implement the requirements of the 2002 Maritime
Transportation Security Act, which aims to protect
America's ports and waterways from a terrorist attack.
Since September 11, the federal government has allocated
less than $500 million to counter this threat," said the
report.
It added that an investment of $4
billion over the next five years "would cut in half the
20-year timetable for replacing and upgrading the coast
guard's fleet of cutters, patrol aircraft, and
communications equipment". As for the $2 billion to
improve cargo security, "This would help cover costs
associated with the Cargo Security Initiative, which
deploys customs inspectors to ports around the world to
screen cargo before it goes to the United States."
After September 11, the US government worked to
tighten air-travel security. Much more could have been
done had the Iraq war funds been available, the center's
report argues, including "$10 billion to protect all US
commercial airliners from shoulder-fired missiles. These
systems, based on existing military technology, would
help reduce the danger from the estimated 100,000
shoulder-fired missiles circulating in the world's black
markets." The report continued that "$5 billion to
purchase state-of-the-art baggage-screening machines ...
would fulfill the congressional mandate to install in
all commercial airports new systems that integrate
baggage screening and baggage handling. Only eight of
the nation's 440 airports have the new machines, and the
administration has requested only $250 million for
equipment this year."
The report noted that the
9-11 Commission concluded that "it's still too easy for
passengers with hidden explosives to make it through
airport security". The center said $240 million of Iraq
war money could have been used to equip US airports with
walk-through explosive detectors.
On the matter
of nuclear terrorism, the report's breakdown included
nearly $33 billion to counter this threat. The bulk of
this, $30.5 billion, would "secure from theft the
world's nuclear-weapons-grade material. Securing the
world's fissile material would enormously reduce the
chance that lethal weapons-grade material could be made
into nuclear and radiological weapons. A 10-year $30
billion program would ensure material security and
weapon dismantlement in the former Soviet Union. Another
$500 million would fund a 'global cleanout program',
aimed at removing dangerous nuclear materials from the
most vulnerable nuclear sites worldwide."
The
rest of the money, $2.25 billion, would have been used
"to expedite the work of the Nunn-Lugar Threat Reduction
program. Doubling this program's budget each year for
the next five years would accelerate Nunn-Lugar, which
has helped deactivate more than 6,000 nuclear warheads
in the former Soviet Union and the United States. The
2004 defense budget provided only $450 million for the
program."
Another $39.5 billion in the report's
breakdown would be used to beef up the US military,
already by far the largest in the world, but "with
commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army is
increasingly stretched thin", said the report. It
earmarked "$24 billion to add two divisions to the army
... Two ... divisions could be added to the army over
the next five years at a cost of $4.8 billion a year. A
larger army would help take the pressure off America's
overtapped National Guardsmen and Reservists."
The rest of the money for the military, $15.5
billion, would "double the number of active-duty troops
in the Special Operations Forces. The United States has
roughly 25,000 Special Operations Forces. These elite
military fighting units played a critical role in
Afghanistan and continue to be highly effective in
tracking down terrorists. Doubling the 25,000 troops in
the Special Operations Forces would cost $7 billion and
an additional $8.5 billion would help maintain the new
forces over the next five years."
The report's
breakdown also included $8.6 billion to help rebuild
Afghanistan; $11 billion to buy Afghanistan's opium crop
and thereby "provide initial and continuing funding for
farmers to shift permanently from growing opium to
cultivating other crops or starting micro-enterprises";
and $775 million to shore up US diplomacy. According to
the center, that amount "would quadruple America's
public diplomacy efforts in the Arab and Muslim world,
as well as triple funding for the National Endowment for
Democracy, each year for the next five years".
Finally, the report's breakdown included nearly
$13 billion in funding for police, fire and other
domestic public-safety services. More than half of that,
$7 billion, "would fully fund for five years the 1996
Community Oriented Policing Services program, which was
designed to put 100,000 new community police officers on
America's streets. The [Bush] administration has cut the
funding for the program to $97 million in the proposed
[2005] budget."
New York's new Iraq cost clock
is located at 47th and Broadway on the north facade of W
Hotel. The clock is part of a legal settlement reached
between Project Billboard and Clear Channel
Communications after the advocacy group sued the media
giant for breaking a contract over the posting of an
anti-war billboard in Times Square during this month's
Republican National Convention, the Reuters news agency
reported.
Clear Channel settled the case by
agreeing to give Project Billboard two Times Square
locations instead of one. In return, the group dropped
its plan for a bomb graphic that Clear Channel said it
found distasteful, Reuters reported.
