“[A]ccording to the Pentagon’s bomb squad, the average cost of an IED [improvised explosive device] is just a few hundred bucks, pocket change to a well-funded insurgency. Worse, over time, the average cost of the cheapo IEDs have dropped from $1,125 in 2006 to $265 in 2009.” – Spencer Ackerman, “$265 Bomb, $300 Billion War: […]
Category: quotes
9/8/2011
“[T]he number of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in Afghanistan has mushroomed: from 1,952 in 2006 to 5,616 in 2009. All told, since the Afghanistan war began, homemade bombs have killed 719 U.S. troops and wounded 7,448.” – Spencer Ackerman, “$265 Bomb, $300 Billion War: The Economics of the 9/11 Era’s Signature Weapon,” Wired, Sep. 22, […]
9/8/2011
“Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to destroy the World Trade Center and cripple the Pentagon. What has been the cost to the United States? In a survey of estimates by The New York Times, the answer is $3.3 trillion, …” – Shan Carter and Amanda Cox, “One 9/11 Tally: $3.3 Trillion,” NYT.com, […]
9/8/2011
“The terrorists who crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 to kill nearly 3,000 people. The total costs of the attack for U.S. companies and taxpayers are much more difficult to ascertain. The cost of losing so many human lives is incalculable. And […]
9/7/2011
“According to the Costs of War research project by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies, the U.S. also spent $1.3 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before counting interest on the war debt and health care for veterans. Analysts are putting the total price of the wars abroad at closer to $2.6 […]
9/1/2011
“More than 18,000 people are suffering from illnesses linked to the dust from the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. The figure comes from the US government’s monitoring and treatment programme for 9/11 emergency workers, volunteers and local residents. The most common afflictions are respiratory problems including asthma and sinusitis, […]
9/1/2011
Aljazeera.com created an interactive chart titled “September 11: Counting the costs to America” online: “$5 trillion, and counting: Osama bin Laden spoke often of a strategy of ‘economic warfare’ against the United States, a low-level war aimed at bankrupting the world’s economic superpower. A decade after the 9/11 attacks, it’s hard to argue that bin […]
9/1/2011
Aljazeera.com created an interactive chart titled “September 11: Counting the costs to America” online: “Military: $1.73 trillion By far the largest share of America’s post-9/11 spending has been military-related. More than half of this category, of course, is the cost of America’s ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is impossible to calculate the human […]
9/1/2011
Aljazeera.com created an interactive chart titled “September 11: Counting the costs to America” online: “Economy: $278 billion The economic cost of 9/11 was significant, and also difficult to measure. Many of these items require proving a negative: How many people decided not to fly because of 9/11? How many fewer tourists visited New York? Several […]
9/1/2011
Aljazeera.com created an interactive chart titled “September 11: Counting the costs to America” online: “Domestic: $540 billion Domestic security spending – the ‘homeland security industry’ – has snowballed since 9/11. This category is mostly driven by growth in the intelligence community and the Homeland Security Department; both of their budgets have roughly doubled in the […]