Arabs at War - Syrian Chapter

[juan_gigante]

(In regards to Iraq cost)

Well, I think we've dropped a bit around $300 billion so far in Iraq. It can be hard to compare Iraq costs to the defense budget because the vast majority of the Iraq costs are paid for by special funding bills, outside of basic departmental budgets, so they can be kind of hard to pin down. And Peter, you switch between pounds and dollars a little there. Be careful with which is which.

[Peter Cairns]

juan_gigante,

yeh your right, second 20 billion should be dollars. Uk defence expenditure is about £26 billion ( depending what accounting method you use), so thats about $50-55 Us, so $ 20 billion seems about right.

Don't forget that the basic wages and costs of most of the personnel etc will be covered by the basic budget,as you'd need to pay these guys anyway, so we are only talking about the costs over and above that.

Peter.

[Amedeo]

Concerning Soviet losses during the Berlin operation I'd point out that according to Krivosheev's work (the revised version of his book is available here, scroll down for the table I'm referring to) the total irrecoverable losses (KIA, MIA, died of wounds, diseases, accidents etc.) for Soviet troops during all 1945 on all fronts (including Manchuria) is 812848.

Perhaps Krivosheev's figures are off the mark, but IMHO we cannot think we're more than 10-20% off. With the current figures we've that 85% of the total mobilized was killed, wounded, sick etc., that is considered a casualty, in some respect. If we postulate higher losses we've to conclude that the Soviets during 1945 were fighting also with a "ghost" army or with... an army of ghosts!

Regards,

Amedeo