http://www.truthout.org/111708J
Never Forget
by: Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t: November 17, 2008
When they say to you that "mistakes were made," never believe that.
Mistakes are always made, but mistakes did not lead us on the road
to Baghdad. We were taken to Iraq by those who knew exactly, precisely
what they were doing. Or believed so anyway.
Do not be persuaded to believe that "bad intelligence" was the problem
and war was the unfortunate result. No one who made this war believed
themselves what they told the nation. They knew quite well and they went
anyway. And they took us with them.
When it is said that an "insurgent" has killed or been killed always ask
who that was, and why. More often than not, it was someone who lived there,
but would not live under foreign rule.
Do not be seduced into thinking of torture as harsh interrogation. The
hour is late and we must confront the torturers among us.
If you are the slightest bit concerned that we have crushed freedom here
and in other lands in the name of freedom, be more concerned. We have.
Never forget or let your children forget that it was all a lie, told
with purpose.
Many of us believed that Vietnam was a catharsis, a moving beyond a
point to which we could never return. It took only 28 years to get from
Saigon to Baghdad. And we took the exact same road. Don't be too ashamed the
trick we fell for was the same one Mark Twain warned of when he wrote,
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry
into a patriotic fervor ..." "All you have to do ...," said Hermann Goering
"... is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers
for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same
in any country."
It has worked in our country. Again.
At the end of any battle, the last man holding a sword is the judge. But
Nuremberg forgot Dresden. Will we forget Abu Ghraib? Will the world forget
what we have done? In the year 2001, we believed that it did not matter who
won the presidential election. What do we believe now?
We have sacked Babylon. Only a fool would believe there will be no day
of atonement.
We stand at the precipice of a new age of political pragmatism.
Realists, making realistic decisions. Let it be listed among those things
that are real the danger of ignoring the enormous crimes of these last eight
years. Lest we come to ask for whom the bell tolls.
***
Consider, this was written 9 months ago... -Ed
http://www.alternet.org/story/77663/
The Three Trillion Dollar War
By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes,
The Times of London UK: February 29, 2008
The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was
wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a
quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more
than anyone could have imagined.
The cost of direct US military operations -- not even including long-term
costs such as taking care of wounded veterans -- already exceeds the cost of
the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean
War.
And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost
ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost
of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in
our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S.
troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007
dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion. With virtually
the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the
cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars.
By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.
Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been
paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in
treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have
not been raised to pay for it -- in fact, taxes on the rich have actually
fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can
be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws
are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been
deferred, possibly to another generation.
On the eve of war, there were discussions of the likely costs. Larry
Lindsey, President Bush's economic adviser and head of the National Economic
Council, suggested that they might reach $200 billion. But this estimate was
dismissed as "baloney" by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. His
deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggested that postwar reconstruction could pay for
itself through increased oil revenues. Mitch Daniels, the Office of
Management and Budget director, and Secretary Rumsfeld estimated the costs
in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which they believed would
be financed by other countries. (Adjusting for inflation, in 2007 dollars,
they were projecting costs of between $57 and $69 billion.) The tone of the
entire administration was cavalier, as if the sums involved were minimal.
Even Lindsey, after noting that the war could cost $200 billion, went on to
say: "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy."
In retrospect, Lindsey grossly underestimated both the costs of the war
itself and the costs to the economy. Assuming that Congress approves the
rest of the $200 billion war supplemental requested for fiscal year 2008, as
this book goes to press Congress will have appropriated a total of over $845
billion for military operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced
security at US bases, and foreign aid programs in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As the fifth year of the war draws to a close, operating costs (spending on
the war itself, what you might call "running expenses") for 2008 are
projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4
billion in 2003, and with Afghanistan the total is $16 billion a month.
Sixteen billion dollars is equal to the annual budget of the United Nations,
or of all but 13 of the US states. Even so, it does not include the $500
billion we already spend per year on the regular expenses of the Defense
Department. Nor does it include other hidden expenditures, such as
intelligence gathering, or funds mixed in with the budgets of other
departments.
Because there are so many costs that the Administration does not count, the
total cost of the war is higher than the official number. For example,
government officials frequently talk about the lives of our soldiers as
priceless. But from a cost perspective, these "priceless" lives show up on
the Pentagon ledger simply as $500,000 -- the amount paid out to survivors
in death benefits and life insurance. After the war began, these were
increased from $12,240 to $100,000 (death benefit) and from $250,000 to
$400,000 (life insurance). Even these increased amounts are a fraction of
what the survivors might have received had these individuals lost their
lives in a senseless automobile accident. In areas such as health and safety
regulation, the US Government values a life of a young man at the peak of
his future earnings capacity in excess of
$7 million -- far greater than the amount that the military pays in death
benefits. Using this figure, the cost of the nearly 4,000 American troops
killed in Iraq adds up to some $28 billion.
The costs to society are obviously far larger than the numbers that show up
on the government's budget. Another example of hidden costs is the
understating of US military casualties. The Defense Department's casualty
statistics focus on casualties that result from hostile (combat) action --
as determined by the military. Yet if a soldier is injured or dies in a
night-time vehicle accident, this is officially dubbed "non combat
related" -- even though it may be too unsafe for soldiers to travel during
daytime.
In fact, the Pentagon keeps two sets of books. The first is the official
casualty list posted on the DOD website. The second, hard-to-find, set of
data is available only on a different website and can be obtained under the
Freedom of Information Act. This data shows that the total number of
soldiers who have been wounded, injured, or suffered from disease is double
the number wounded in combat. Some will argue that a percentage of these
non-combat injuries might have happened even if the soldiers were not in
Iraq. Our new research shows that the majority of these injuries and
illnesses can be tied directly to service in the war.
>From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets of books, and
chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we
have attempted to identify how much we have been spending -- and how much we
will, in the end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than
$3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions. They
are conceptually simple, even if occasionally technically complicated. A $3
trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably
errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only
to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of
the world, or to Iraq.
>From the beginning, the United Kingdom has played a pivotal role --
strategic, military, and political -- in the Iraq conflict. Militarily, the
UK contributed 46,000 troops, 10 per cent of the total. Unsurprisingly,
then, the British experience in Iraq has paralleled that of America: rising
casualties, increasing operating costs, poor transparency over where the
money is going, overstretched military resources, and scandals over the
squalid conditions and inadequate medical care for some severely wounded
veterans.
Before the war, Gordon Brown set aside £1 billion for war spending. As of
late 2007, the UK had spent an estimated £7 billion in direct operating
expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan (76 percent of it in Iraq). This
includes money from a supplemental "special reserve", plus additional
spending from the Ministry of Defense.
The special reserve comes on top of the UK's regular defense budget. The
British system is particularly opaque: funds from the special reserve are
"drawn down" by the Ministry of Defense when required, without specific
approval by Parliament. As a result, British citizens have little clarity
about how much is actually being spent.
In addition, the social costs in the UK are similar to those in the US --
families who leave jobs to care for wounded soldiers, and diminished quality
of life for those thousands left with disabilities.
By the same token, there are macroeconomic costs to the UK as there have
been to America, though the long-term costs may be less, for two reasons.
First, Britain did not have the same policy of fiscal profligacy; and
second, until 2005, the United Kingdom was a net oil exporter.
We have assumed that British forces in Iraq are reduced to 2,500 this year
and remain at that level until 2010. We expect that British forces in
Afghanistan will increase slightly, from 7,000 to 8,000 in 2008, and remain
stable for three years. The House of Commons Defense Committee has recently
found that despite the cut in troop levels, Iraq war costs will increase by
2 percent this year and personnel costs will decrease by only 5 percent.
Meanwhile, the cost of military operations in Afghanistan is due to rise by
39 per ent. The estimates in our model may be significantly too low if these
patterns continue.
Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel
Memorial Prize for Economics in 2001. Linda Bilmes is a lecturer in public
policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
© 2008 The Times of London UK All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/77663/
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