GDP tells you nothing about sustainability

We could, of course, always make the payments, simply by printing more money - we simply promise to pay people by giving them dollar bills - but that could set off inflation.

For instance, one of the costs of the war is that soldiers today get very seriously injured but stay alive, and we can keep them alive but at an enormous price.

The attempt to minimize cost and maximize profits often interfered with our true mission in Iraq. We should have been working to get jobs for Iraqis, but the contractors found it cheaper to import Nepalese and others. This increased resentment, contributed to unemployment, and to our losing the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.

If you're injured in an automobile accident, and you sue the driver, you get much more for your injury than if you're fighting for your country. There's a double standard here.

What you measure affects what you do. If you don't measure the right thing, you don't do the right thing.

The national debt will have increased by approximately 50% in just eight years! We will have created a new unfunded entitlement - disability and health care benefits for the huge number of disabled veterans returning from the Iraq war.