Bluster is cheap. American lives and bombs aren’t. How much did the bombs Trump dropped on Iran cost?
Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East. — Tom Nichols in The Atlantic
- Trump rose to power criticizing Bush-era politicians for lying about weapons of mass destruction. Now he is accused of doing the same — Richard Hall
- George W. Bush and his administration of neocons spent years building a spurious case for the war in Iraq. They collated sketchy intelligence about supposedly hidden weapons of mass destruction, fed it to a pliant press, went through the motions of seeking United Nations resolutions and formed a ramshackle coalition of the willing before going to war.
- It took Donald Trump all of five seconds to create his own WMD scandal when he rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for sharing a U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran was not seeking a nuclear weapon. — Independent
See how many Americans have died and wounded in foreign wars with this map.
Trump used 6 bunker buster bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s nuclear sites — Daily Mail
The massive, 30,000 pound GBU-57A/B MOP cost somewhere between US$400 million and US$500 million to develop and each bomb costs around US$3.5 million to manufacture. It would be carried and dropped by America’s B-2 stealth bombers. — The Diplomat
Estimated cost: $450 million + 6 bunker buster bombs @ $3.5 million each = $471 million
$471 million of your tax dollars up in smoke
Tomahawks: $78 million of your tax dollars up in smoke
The Pentagon’s budget proposal for the upcoming 2021 Fiscal Year revealed that the service had requested $125 million to purchase 48 Tomahawks, but details about the exact purpose of the acquisition were kept classified initially, according to official budget documents and a report from Task and Purpose.
The block V Tomahawk costs $1,900,000 per round.
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Estimated cost: $1.9 million x 30 Tomahawk missiles = $57 million
Pentagon profiteers
Gregory Hayes, CEO of Raytheon Technologies Corp. (RTX) made $21,929,459 in 2023 — AFL-CIO
Raytheon Technologies — the second-largest firm with $41.9 billionin 2021 defense revenues — contributed at least $374,000 in donations through August 2022 to 65 Republicans who voted against certifying the presidential election. — Defense News
Republicans: No money for food stamps, billions for bombs
Netanyahu sabotages nuclear deal with Iran
Israel believed the deal was too lenient, and then-presidential candidate Trump campaigned on a promise to completely dismantle it. In 2018, as president, Trump pulled out of the deal and initiated new sanctions against Iran. Tehran started to increase uranium enrichment and build up its stockpile once more, and removed monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities. — Independent
Israel drags America into a war it started
But as the talks dragged on through the months, Trump lost patience. When Israel decided to launch its attack this month, the U.S. and Iran were days away from meeting again.
No new intelligence showing an increased nuclear threat has been presented or claimed by the Trump administration beyond the president’s passing comment on Air Force One. And senior administration officials told the New York Times they were unaware of any new intelligence showing a rush to build a bomb. There are obvious differences with Iraq, of course. This war has already begun. Israel has already taken out Iran’s air defenses and is bombing military and nuclear infrastructure across the country at will.
It was Israel’s fait accompli that appears to have brought Trump around. The war has already begun. Trump may be able to join it in a limited capacity and claim victory, but the days of claiming the mantle of an anti-war president are over. — Independent
TakeAway: Why do Americans have to sacrifice their Medicare, Social Security and healthcare to fund Trump’s war on Iran and make Pentagon profiteers like Raytheon richer?
Deepak
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