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True cost of the Iraq war revealed
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Not only has the war succeeded in making the world a far more dangerous place, killing more Iraqis in a few years than Saddam had managed in decades and turning the country into an unspeakable hellhole, but the economic cost to the US and indeed to the entire world has just been revealed in a new book.
Some figures:
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan
Forget about dodgy sub-prime mortgage deals and failing banks. This is what is causing the world's economy to be in the state is in.
Some figures:
$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost - to America alone - of Bush's Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days' fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries - a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/iraq.afghanistan
Forget about dodgy sub-prime mortgage deals and failing banks. This is what is causing the world's economy to be in the state is in.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
0
Comments
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ puts the number of Iraqi dead at 89,000 at most. In the Al-Anfal campaign alone, Saddam is said to have killed between 100,000-200,000 people, and that's not counting all the executions that took place while he was President of Iraq.
More thorough studies such as the Lancet Report or the Opinion Research Business Poll, which take into account unreported deaths experienced by ordinary Iraqis, put the death toll between 650,000 (Lancet report as of June 2006) and a million deaths (ORB poll, summer 2007).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003#Overview
Not all those deaths were caused by Allied military action of course. But they were caused by sectarian violence that was virtually non-existent when Saddam was in power.
Even if the Iraq conflict were to permanently stop tomorrow and not a single more death were to be caused by it, the human cost to the Iraqis alone would have already been far higher than that inflicted by the entire lenght of Saddam Hussein's regime. The way things are going, it will probably end up being many times greater than Saddam's own death count.
But that too is flawed
The Body Count has around 90,000 deaths - this is consitent with the UN estimate for 2006 which is around 35,000 deaths in that year, and less (but still within the same ballpark) as the Iraqi Health Minister's figure of 100-150,000 dead (like the UN based on bodies brought into morgues). A survey by the Iraqi health ministry in Nov 2006 was around the same (150,000 dead)
On the other side of coin a survey by the Opinion Research Business estimated 1m deaths by August 2007. Lancet had 650,000 deaths by June 2006.
So what we see is that most of those where they count bodies are consitent with each other. And with one exception (the Iraqi survey) the statistical surveys are consistent with each other. the trouble is the counting isn't consistent with the surveys.
Both types are flawed and the IBC risks overcounting as much as undercounting when bombs go off with mass loss of life. As no-one knows the true figures the count you tend to use depends on a) whether you're pro or anti-war and b) whether you think statistical methods are more likely to get an accurate result than counting
Of course if we left the body count would get much higher and would likely result in either a return to a facist government or a hard line Islamic one, as the forces for a democratic Iraq are squashed between those ideologies and a West who's concerns for human rights and democracy for those who live outside Europe really is a facade
We currently allow loads of other dictators to do it - but that isnt the point.
We should have either;
A) Gone to him with a deal like Gadaffi and made him sell us oil in exchange for certain rights for his people.
There's a lot of truth in that. There certainly was too much optimisim that Saddam would fall and all would be well. Too few troops were put on the ground and the UK/US Government's were so concerned with making the case that they didn't put enough thought into worse case scenarios.
The oil for food programme was a good idea, it was just mis-managed in the most dire way. If it had been made to work effectively it would have been a good start.
I'd say they (esp Rumsfeld) ignored worst case scenarios and any negatives and sidelined or ignored the experienced voices that made them.
I'm not sure they fully ignored them. But they didn't fully plan - there were certainly plans in place, but not nearly detailed enough and they tended to rely on the Iraqi army being destroyed, rather than just melting away.
That said as predictions of guerilla war had been made for Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leona, Haiti and East Timor and turned out not to be true, perhaps we shouldn't be overly harsh that policy-makers ignored them the one time they turned out to be right.
But none of these countries are in the Middle East. If you look at history, anyone who's tried to invade that region has had a hard time of it. From the crusades to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, surely that says something?
But the professional military's resentment of Mr Rumsfeld dates to the run-up to the Iraq war when the army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, was sidelined.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/14/usa.iraq1
Shinseki is famous for his remarks to the U.S. Senate Armed Services committee before the war in Iraq in which he said "something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers" would probably be required for post-war Iraq. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz publicly disagreed with his estimate.[1]
When the insurgency took hold in post-war Iraq, Shinseki's comments and their public rejection by the civilian leadership were often cited by those who felt the Bush administration deployed too few troops to Iraq. On November 15, 2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said that General Shinseki's estimate had proved correct.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki
Having read Colin Powell's autobiography I cannot believe he was completely on board with Rummys plans either. Gen Zinni's book is worth a read.
I certainly don't believe the US government gives a toss about the lives and wellbeing of its own soldiers.
Turks did rather well, as did we when pushing them out. Afghanistan is generally not regarded in the Middle East (and apart from Elphy Bey the British tended to win the Afghan Wars comprehensively - but the logistic costs of keeping troops there tended to be prohibitive for continued occupation).
and the Serbs for example do have a historical record of fighting hard guerilla wars (from the earliest invasions up until WW2)
Does this cynic also ask if France and German opposition to the war was related to the talks some of their companies were having about some rather nice oil deals once sanctions were ended (and which would be void if the Saddam was no longer around)
Does he ask whether the opposition of the UN General Secretary was related to the fact his son and other UN officials were making a fortune out of corrupt dealings with Iraq under the Food for Oil Scandal?
Does the same cynic ask why all those who claimed they were anti-saddam in the 80's suddenly stopped supporting his overthrow when the US came on the scene and ask whether there sudden change of heart was due to a visceral dislike of the US and a casual disregard for the plight of the Iraqi?
Does this same cynic wonder why people claim the US supplied the Iraqis with WMDs when in fact the US supplied intelligence to israel to destroy a nuclear reactor (built by the French)
does this cynic wonder why people claim the Brits supplied Iraq with weapons (6 AVRE's if I remember) and then forget to mention they were one of the most minor suppliers and that it was the Russian, Chinese and French who supplied the equipment?
A real cynic might wonder whether the first cynic was a bit selective in their cynicism
As a more detailed answer...
Maybe yes, or maybe not. But in any case we're not talking about whether to have a pint of ale or a pint or lager. We're talking about whether going to war against Iraq or not. One answer was always wrong, and the other wasn't, regardless of possible ulterior motives.
I very much doubt it. Despite the virulent campaign of hatred the UN and the man suffered for years by the neocon movement (simply for having the temerity of suggesting the US cannot just do whatever the hell it pleases all the time) Kofi Annan has always come across to me as a fundamentally decent man interested in peace, not war.
Who are these people?
And more importantly, did they support overthrowing Saddam before the US decided it would do it? Or were they simply expressing their opposition to the brutal regime all along, while the US and Britain shook hands with the dictator for the sake of a quick buck?
I don't remember recalling a single person in the entire world who actually supported overthrowing Saddam's regime first but changed their mind when the US took just such decision. Do you?
The US provided plenty of know-how, and indeed some raw materials for Saddam's WMD programme. That's not to say they didn't aid Israel in targetting Iraqi facilities. On the contrary. As far as they're concerned, the best of both worlds!
Probably because the latter didn't bother the entire world with scaremongering doomsday scenarios in order to justify a war against the very enemy they had been going to bed with for decades.
Even in the murky world of global policies, such hypocrisy remains unsurpassed.
Actually the current neo con way of thinking was to leave as minumum a government structure as possible in place, so they didn't plan - there's a book on this, on mass privatisation
it's called the shock doctrine, it's really good and quite detailed, apart from for the people in iraq
It somehow justifies the march for facism though doesn't it?
Possibly, though I suspect that you feel the right the answer was supporting a facist regime.
Oh purlease - as a cynic you're absolutely wanting.... His son and officials were making a nice little packet and Kofi says well that was a bit naughty, ok it helped starve a few Iraqi's to death and allowed Saddam to build a couple of new palce's but it's not like they did anything really bad.
See my later and earlier comments about quick bucks. But what did they think was going to happen if they succeeded? Did they think Saddam was going to suddenly say 'Ok chaps that's it - lections next Thursday and all those in my torture camps here's some compensation for having your testicles shoved in a mangle."
I suspect most of them didn't think at all. Those who did were supporting a facist mass murderer and they seem happy about it.
Plenty. Galloway, Benn, Tam Daylell
Not according to iraq they didn't. after GW1 Iraq as a condition of the cease fire provided all the info and know-how they got. the US was next to no-where. of course Iraq could have been lying. However, that present us with an interesting conodrum - if they were lying and the US supplied them, they'd broken the terms of the ceasefire and so the case for war is strengthened
when Goebells said if you tell the lie enough it becomes the truth he was wrong. It's still a lie. The US policy in regard to Iraq and Iran was I hope they both loose - supplying both with enough to ensure neither rather despicable regime got the upper hand
I assume you're exempting my first, second and third para. Also i'm not sure we justified the invasion because we sold them some armoured recovering vehicles in the 70s.
Not really. I myself have never supported such regimes. As indeed haven't most anti-war people (despite the rubbish smearing attempting by the warmongers). Quite a different cry from a rather sizeable proportion of Iraq war supporters, who true to their allegiance to the cause are quite happy to support whichever brutal regime their beloved leader tells them to. You can bet your bottom dollar that if things go sour with America’s newest best friend President Karimov, for instance, the very same people who praise that good ally of the US today would, at the White House’s command, be screaming for his blood and sheding crocodile tears for the 5-year olds Karimov employs as child labour- children for whom they couldn’t give a monkeys now, just as they couldn’t give a monkeys about the Iraqis for more than two decades.
It was misappropriation of funds by Saddam that made Iraqis starve. No, let me rephrase that… it was years of strangling UN sanctions that made it possible. You might believe as President of the UN Annan is partly responsbile, but not even a small fracton of the culpability of the nations that instigated the sanctions in the first place.
In any case Annan’s oppostion to the war was purely academic. He had no power or influence over UN resolutions. Member nations did.
Sorry, I'm not sure if you're talking about heads of State or ordinary people. If the former a few of them might indeed be guilty of hypocrisy (but certainly not more guilty of supporting fascist mass murderers than the US and British governments of course, which have a longer distinguished history in that respect than arguably any other nation on earth.).
If it’s ordinary people, the immense majority of anti war people have never, ever supported Saddam’s regime, either before or after the US decided he was an inconvenience. Opposing a war that was going to be far worse than the problem it was getting rid of is by no means supporting a dictator.
And failing spectacularly by making Saddam the strongest Arab nation in the Middle East, presumably.
And provided tons of technical know-how, and starter kits for chemical and biological warfare, and massive public support including much praise and hand shaking… only to be followed by lectures to the world about human rights, freedom and democracy… while on their day off continuing to arm and support tyrants just as bad as Saddam was…
Nah, believe me. When it comes to hypocricy, the good old US, and Britain of late are on a league above everyone else on Earth.
The sanctions were put in place to allow in food and medicine - they were some of the milder sanctions put in place and deliberately designed to allow in humanitarian supplies. UN officials colluded with Saddam and others to corrupt those sanctions. Kofi Annan may not have dipped into them himself (though his son, who was working for him at the time did), but he has to bear responsibility for the massive corruption which went on under his organisation and even when reports started to come through to take no effective action to even investigate it, never mind stop it.
Both. The hypocrisy of the British and US collapses into a small pile of dust compared to that of the Soviet Union (a better life for the working man), French (we didn't think our clients would massacre so many in Rwanda) the British left (Thatcher vs the Argetinian Junta - well it's got to be the facists of course) and countless others.
And the hypocrisy of even these states tails into insignificance beside that beside those who think that being against war in Iraq makes them morally pure. Sorry it doesn't - it makes them as morally compromised as the rest of us - and sadly only a very tiny minority accept that (and they are the ones I actually respect)
But if the war had gone as planned (and it almost did) would these same people now be admitting they went on the anti-war marches to oppose the overthrow of a genocidal dicator. I bet in ten years we'll see the massive rewriting of history and everyone will be claiming that they never went on the war march. Same as now no-one admits they spread doom and gloom about intervention in Bosnia
Of course currently we have the opposite and everyone is claiming they always knew it would be a disaster.
Sorry - the world isn't like that.
France? Well I've never seen France bombing dozens of nations since the end of WWII and claiming to do so in the name of democracy while actively overthrowing democratic governments and replacing them with raping, torturing and murdering brutal fascists.
Guilty of hypocrisy they might be but believe me you, they are not even a pale imitation to the actions of good old Uncle Sam, who have become the dictionary definiton of the word.
I wouldn't know if the British left (or how much of it) really supported the fascists in Argentina as I'm not familiar with it. Presumably it doesn't put them any more at fault than the British right, who had been bending over in front of Augusto Pinochet just as willlingly.
Nobody claimed that. There were two stances to the war: either it was right or wrong to go for it. Despite the numerous (and frankly rather tiresome) claims by the warmongers that those who opposed the war were supporting Saddam or condening his actions, nothing could be further from the truth. But as it was proved to be, going to war was not only based on lies and morally bankrupt but also a disaster many times worse for everyone concerned.
Really? Well before the war most of us already suspected that all the US and Britain cared about was to get their greedy hands on Iraqi oil and their military bases on the land. Even then it had become clear there was little concern for what would happen to Iraq once Saddam was removed or how it would be handled. There had been plenty of warnings about religious extremists taking a foothold in Iraq and of power vacuums and wars between the different factions that make up Iraq.
If only some people had listened women would still be able to walk the streets in Iraq alone and wearing Western clothes, instead of head-to-toe coverings and having to be accompanied by male relatives for their own safety.
And of course the entire world knew all the allegations and justifications were utter lies and fabrications. There were no WMDs. There were no links to terrorism. There was no link to 9/11. There was no threat to other nations. There was no desire to clear the region of nuclear weapons, as the recently disclosed efforts by the British government to suppress any mention of Israel's arsenal of nukes shows. People don't like being lied to. People don't like the international institutions we have in placed lied to with fabricated evidence. People don't like nations and allies being insulted, threatened, bullied and bribed just for daring to have a different opinion.
The actions of the US and Britain leading to the Iraq war, and the subsequent conflict and occupation, have not only have been proven to be catastrophic and criminal, but will also be reviled by all right thinking people as the nauseating actions they are for centuries to come.
Some might say it was the Conservative Govts actions that encouraged the invasion in the first place whereas the previous Labour Govt had done the opposite.
British writers hold that the United Kingdom's reduction in military capacity in the South Atlantic also encouraged the invasion.[19][20][21]
^ Guide to the conflict. Fight for the Falklands — 20 years on. BBC News. Retrieved on 2007-03-18. “The Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, and two junior ministers had resigned by the end of the week [following the Argentinian invasion]. They took the blame for Britain's poor preparations and plans to decommission HMS Endurance, the Navy's only Antarctic patrol vessel. It was a move which may have lead the Junta to believe the UK had little interest in keeping the Falklands.”
^ "Secret Falklands fleet revealed", BBC News, bbc.co.uk, 2005-06-01. Retrieved on 2007-03-18. "Lord Owen, who was foreign secretary in 1977, said that if Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government had taken similar action to that of five years earlier, the war would not have happened."
^ Casciani, Dominic. "1976 Falklands invasion warning", BBC News, bbc.co.uk, 2006-12-29. "The Franks Report into the eventual war noted that as tension mounted during 1977, the government covertly sent a small naval force to the islands — but did not repeat the move when relations worsened again in 1981-2. This has led some critics to blame prime minister Margaret Thatcher for the war, saying the decision to plan the withdrawal of the only naval vessel in the area sent the wrong signal to the military junta in Buenos Aires."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6213121.stm
there seems to be a difference between making policy decisions which turned out to be wrong (and it was a fundamental miscalculation of the junta which thought that reduction of a Naval Vessel meant the Marines wouldn't fight) and large sections of the British left supporting Argentinia against the democratic Government of the UK
I think I might have confused what you mean by 'the British left' so my answer/references related to Government decisions as opposed to NGO's. Being young at the time I'm struggling to remember anti-war protests by the British left you are refering to. Most of what I recall was some voices, and I cannot remember who, calling for negotiation/UN involvement as opposed to 'supporting' Galtieri against Thatcher.
You'll have to point me in the right direction of any that did as from what I remember of the 1980s the British Left was vehemently opposed to right wing dictatorships in South America.