The Battle of the powerful against the weak

Excerpt

"It is simply a given that an American military commander – with or without a calm, steely gaze and complex calculus – should be hashing out emergency decrees with Central Asian dictators, launching missile strikes on African villages, driving hell-for-leather in bristling convoys down the streets of occupied cities, stationing warships off the coast of Lebanon and Iran… and continually throwing massive amounts of American blood and treasure into a never-ending campaign to "crush the ants" that swarm so inconveniently around the imperial boot heels. "

Editorial Comment

The quote above confirms a point that I have been making for some time. One of the subjects that is a taboo in America other than questioning Israel is the conscious pursuit of Imperialism. No candidate for Presidency is honest enough to say to the electorate that the cornerstone of American Foreign Policy is to be the next Empire. Sole Super Power somehow assumes that you have a licence to bend countries to your will. Every one wants to sugar coat the word Imperialism including the electorate. There is a dishonest 'wink wink' that goes on between the electorate and the elected to say we know what's going on here. Like in the case of Israel, the problem is not one of Security but of using a kinder word to define naked aggression.

Terrorism fits in neatly to define the enemy. Although terrorists are ants, nobody asks the question, why are you using a hammer to kill an ant. The sheer arrogance of calling Iranians ants bypasses the reality that the Iraqi ants
refuse to die after 5 years of reckless destruction of their homes, cities and livelihood, not to mention killing over 600,000 of them.

This is the other point I have been hammering away for some time that there is no clash of civilizations. It is really a war of the powerful against the weak. The stakes would be heavily in favor of the powerful but for one fact, "arrogance."

There is no greater arrogance then to perceive your "enemy" as an ant, you can crush any time. The lack of planning for attacking Iraq was based on this philosophy, that it was enough to put the American boot in Baghdad and the other ants would beg for mercy. Five years later, the arrogance has grown not diminished. An arrogant person is like a drunken person who remains unfazed by the reality of being repeatedly beaten up.

Here is the other point, if it is beginning to make sense now. In the battle of the powerful against the weak, the powerful will lose.

In my mind the writing is on the wall, the strong have already lost but are in denial about it. More importantly, the weak have won but don't know how they did it. Most of the victory is by the mistakes of the powerful but the weak have held stead fast and refused to be intimidated by a show of force. They have nothing to lose but their lives which are already not worth living. In the ratio of casualties for every 100,000 of the weak getting killed only 4000 of the powerful are killed. When 100,000,000 of the weak are killed ( like ants) then only 4,000,000 of the powerful will have died. Consider the power of this math. The powerful who represent a very small percent of the world will have been almost wiped out, while the weak would only have been dented. Will 104 million people have to be butchered before some one realizes that the Empire is the terrorist and that this is a war that the Powerful cannot win.

The British at the peak of their power had the good sense to realize that the game was over and exited India with all their might but not before one million people were heedlessly murdered. With all this experience, the British do nothing better than to hang on to the coat tails of Empire by clinging slaveshely to the Americans.

The biggest threat to the world today is the quest for empire by a country who lacks the muscle. The rhetoric coming out of America is frightening and laughable. No one is afraid of America today, not Venezuela, not Cuba, not North Korea, not Iran, not Pakistan, not Afghanistan, not even tiny Hamas.

In the meantime America is focused on electing a leader for the next four years not a President but a Commander in Chief. One who expects to be woken up at 3.00 AM in the morning by a breathless aid informing him/her that half a dozen people have just blown up the Capitol Building, which country or countries should we attack?

Khusro


Crushing the Ants
Admiral Fallon and His Empire
By Chris Floyd
March 7, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd03072008.html
There has been quite a buzz in "progressive" circles over the new Esquire article about Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. Central Command, the military satrapy that covers the entire "arc of crisis" at the heart of the "War on Terror," from east Africa, across the Middle East, and on to the borders of China. Much has been made of Fallon's alleged apostasy from the Bush regime's bellicosity toward Tehran; indeed, the article paints Fallon as the sole bulwark against an American attack on Iran and hints ominously that the good admiral may be forced out by George W. Bush this summer, clearing the way for one last murderous hurrah by the lame duck president. The general reaction to the article seems to be: God preserve this honorable man, and keep him as our shield and defender against the wicked tyrant.
But this is most curious. For behind the melodramatic framing and gushing hero-worship of the article written by Thomas Barnett (of whom more later) we find nothing but a few mild disagreements between Fallon and the White House over certain questions of tactics, timing and presentation in regard to American domination of a vast range of nations and peoples.
Fallon himself has long denied the hearsay evidence that he had declared, upon taking over Central Command, that a war on Iran "isn't going to happen on my watch." And in fact, the article itself depicts Fallon's true attitude toward the idea of an attack on Iran right up front, in his own words. After noting Fallon's concerns about focusing too much on Iran to the exclusion of the other "pots boiling over" in the region, Barnett presses the point and asks: And if it comes to war? Fallon replies with stark, brutal clarity:
"'Get serious,' the admiral says. 'These guys are ants. When the time comes, you crush them.'"
The article makes clear that Fallon's main concerns about a war with Iran are, as noted, about tactics and timing: Sure, when the time comes no shuffling on that point we'll crush these subhumans like the insects they are; but we've already got a lot on our plate at the moment, so why not hold off as long as we can? After all, Fallon is conducting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as overseeing an on-going "regime change" operation in Somalia, where the United States has been aiding Ethiopian invaders with bombing raids, death squads, renditions and missile strikes against Somali civilians such as the one this week that killed three women and three children.
The most remarkable fact about the Esquire article is not its laughable portrayal of the man in charge of mass slaughter and military aggression across a broad swathe of the globe as a shining knight holding back the dogs of war. Nor is it the delusion on the part of Barnett --- and much of the commentaries as well that Bush would ever appoint some kind of secret peacenik as the main commander of his Terror War. (Although it could well be that Fallon will be fired in the end for not groveling obsequiously enough to the Leader, in the required Petraeus-Franks manner. Or indeed, that he might even resign rather than commit what he sees as the tactical error of crushing the Iranian ants at this particular time. But so what? If he quits, someone else who would be happy to do the stomping will be appointed in his place. If Bush decides to attack Iran, then Iran will be attacked. There is no one standing in the way. It's as simple as that.)
No, what is most noteworthy about the article is that Barnett has given us, unwittingly, one of the clearest pictures yet of the true nature of the American system today. And that system is openly, unequivocally and unapologetically imperial, in every sense of the word, and in every sinew of its structure. For what is Fallon's actual position? We see him commanding vast armies, both his own and those of local proxies, waging battles to bend nations, regions and peoples to the will of a superpower. We see him meeting with the heads of client kingdoms in his purview, in Cairo, Kabul, Baghdad, Dushanbe: advising, cajoling, demanding, threatening, wading deeply into the internal affairs of the dominated lands, seeking to determine their politics, their economic development, their military structure and foreign policies.
For example, Barnett tells us that Fallon was locked away with Pervez Musharaff for hours the day before the Pakistani dictator imposed emergency rule last year. Barnett, hilariously, swallows Fallon's line that Washington didn't greenlight Musharaff's crackdown: "Did I tell him this is not a recommended course of action? Of course." Yes, Admiral, whatever you say. But did you tell him there would be any adverse consequences whatsoever from Washington: any cut-off or even diminution of military and economic aid, for example? Of course not. (For a glimpse of hero-worship, here's how Barnett sets the scene: "As the admiral recounts the exchange, his voice is flat, his gaze steady. His calculus on this subject is far more complex than anyone else's." A calculus more complex than anyone else's in the whole wide world! And certainly more complex than any analysis those ants in Pakistan could come up with themselves.) To his credit, Fallon then goes on to give the true picture: Washington supported the crackdown because Pakistan is "an immature democracy" that needs a savvy strongman and American loyalist at the helm. As for the idea that Benazir Bhutto then still alive could play a role in stabilizing the country: "Fallon is pessimistic. He slowly shakes his head. 'Better forget that.'" A few weeks later, Bhutto was out of the picture.
What we are seeing, quite simply, is an imperial proconsul in action. There is no difference whatsoever between Fallon's role and that of the proconsuls sent out by the Roman emperors to deal with the wars and tribes and client kingdoms of the empire's far-flung provinces. There too, the emperor could not simply snap his fingers and bend every event to his will; there had to be some cajoling, compromise, occasional setbacks. But behind everything lurked the threat of Roman military power and the promise of ruin and death if Rome's interests were not accommodated in the end. It is the same with America's pro-consuls today.
Nowhere in the article nor anywhere else in the well-wadded bastions of the "bipartisan foreign policy community" (and amongst its fawning scribes) will you find even the slightest inkling of a doubt that America should be comporting itself as an imperial power in this way. It is simply a given that an American military commander with or without a calm, steely gaze and complex calculus should be hashing out emergency decrees with Central Asian dictators, launching missile strikes on African villages, driving hell-for-leather in bristling convoys down the streets of occupied cities, stationing warships off the coast of Lebanon and Iran and continually throwing massive amounts of American blood and treasure into a never-ending campaign to "crush the ants" that swarm so inconveniently around the imperial boot heels. For the elite and, sadly, for the majority of other Americans as well this is simply the natural order of the world. Not only are these imperial assumptions unquestioned; they are unconscious, as if it were literally inconceivable that the nation's affairs could be ordered in any other way.
We should be grateful to Barnett. Not even the most scathing dissident could have produced a more damning indictment of America's imperial system than this fawning indeed groveling piece of hagiography.
This is not the first time that Barnett's true-believer cluelessness has produced genuine revelations. Last year, in a similarly gung-ho, brass-awed piece on Washington's latest imperial satrapy, the Africa Command, Barnett revealed that the Bush Administration was using an American death squad in Somalia to "clean up" areas after a bombing or missile strike. As I wrote in June 2007:
The Esquire piece, by Thomas Barnett, is a mostly glowing portrait of the Africa Command, which, we are told, is designed to wed military, diplomatic, and development prowess in a seamless package, a whole new way of projecting American power: "pre-emptive nation-building instead of pre-emptive regime change," or as Barnett describes it at another point, "Iraq done right." Although Barnett's glib, jargony, insider piece -- told entirely from the point of view of U.S. military officials -- does contain bits of critical analysis, it is in no way an expose. The new details he presents on the post-invasion slaughter are thus even more chilling, as they are offered simply as an acceptable, ordinary aspect of this laudable new enterprise.Barnett reveals that the gunship attacks on refugees were just the first part of the secret U.S. mission that was "Africa Command's" debut on the imperial stage. Soon after the attacks, "Task Force 88, a very secret American special-operations unit," was helicoptered into the strike area. As Barnett puts it: "The 88's job was simple: Kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind."
Some 70,000 people fled their homes in the first wave of the Ethiopian invasion. (More than 400,000 fled the brutal consolidation of the invasion in Mogadishu last spring.) Tens of thousands of these initial refugees headed toward the Kenyan border, where the American gunships struck. When the secret operation was leaked, Bush Administration officials said that American planes were trying to hit three alleged al Qaeda operatives who had allegedly been given sanctuary by the Islamic Councils government decapitated by the Ethiopians. But Barnett's insiders told him that the actual plan was to wipe out thousands of "foreign fighters" whom Pentagon officials believed had joined the Islamic Courts forces. "Honestly, nobody had any idea just how many there really were," Barnett was told. "But we wanted to get them all."Thus the Kenyan border area -- where tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing -- was meant to be "a killing zone," Barnett writes:
America's first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat 'until no more bad guys, as one officer put it.At this point, Barnett -- or his sources -- turn coy. We know there were multiple gunship strikes; and from Barnett's account, we know that the "88s" did go in at least once after the initial gunship attack to "kill anyone still alive and leave no unidentified bodies behind." But Barnett's story seems to suggest that once active American participation in the war was leaked, the "killing zone" was abandoned at some point. So there is no way of knowing at this point how many survivors of the American attacks were then killed by the "very special secret special-operations unit," or how many "rinse-and-repeat" cycles the "88s" were able to carry out in what Barnett called "a good plan."Nor do we know just who the "88s" killed. As noted, the vast majority of refugees were civilians, just as the majority of the victims killed by the American gunship raids were civilians. Did the "88s" move in on the nomadic tribesmen decimated by the air attack and "kill everyone still alive"? Or did they restrict themselves to killing any non-Somalis they found among the refugees?
Chris Floyd is an American journalist and frequent contributor to CounterPunch.

He is the author of the book:
Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium.

He can be reached through his website: www.chris-floyd.com.

A question of principles

The resolution was carried with only one vote aginst it, that of Ron Paul. Blind and unashamed support of Israel , no matter how wrong or dangerous it's policies, are the hall mark of US Foreign policy.
How can the Palestinians or other Arab nations look to the US to bring about a settlement of this issue? Frankly neither the US nor the Arabs care two hoots for the Palestinians. They are just a bargaining chip for every one to squeeze more aid out of the US and it appears the US is happy to spend the money.
It seems to suit the US to have a belligerent Israel sitting on the throats of Arabs like Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria to keep them in check. The Arabs are not only not trusted but their oil is coveted. People like Ron Paul are naive to think that the US does not have Imperial ambitions. Or perhaps Ron Paul is smarter than the rest of them and feels that principles are more important than expediency and the US did not get to where it did by simply following double standards. If Ron Paul is a man of principles in Congress, then he is one of the few.

Khusro

March 7, 2008Stop Choosing Sidesby Rep. Ron Paul

On Wednesday, March 5, the US House of Representatives passed a resolution (HR 951) condemning Palestinian rocket attacks that include a strident defense of recent Israeli tactics in the Gaza Strip. The resolution also condemned Iran and Syria for "sponsoring terror attacks," and demanded that Saudi Arabia publicly condemn Palestinian actions.

The resolution was originally introduced in January, but contains new language including a passage saying that that "those responsible for launching rocket attacks against Israel routinely embed their production facilities and launch sites amongst the Palestinian civilian population, utilizing them as human shields" and "the inadvertent inflicting of civilian casualties as a result of defensive military operations aimed at military targets, while deeply regrettable, is not at all morally equivalent to the deliberate targeting of civilian populations as practiced by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups."

Although 23 Congressman abstained or voted "present," only one bravely voted no: Rep. Ron Paul.

Below is Rep. Paul's statement he gave to the House before the vote.

Mr. Speaker: I rise in opposition to H. Res. 951, a resolution to condemn Palestinian rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. As one who is consistently against war and violence, I obviously do not support the firing of rockets indiscriminately into civilian populations. I believe it is appalling that Palestinians are firing rockets that harm innocent Israelis, just as I believe it is appalling that Israel fires missiles into Palestinian areas where children and other non-combatants are killed and injured.

Unfortunately, legislation such as this is more likely to perpetuate violence in the Middle East than contribute to its abatement. It is our continued involvement and intervention – particularly when it appears to be one-sided – that reduces the incentive for opposing sides to reach a lasting peace agreement.

Additionally, this bill will continue the march toward war with Iran and Syria, as it contains provocative language targeting these countries. The legislation oversimplifies the Israel/Palestine conflict and the larger unrest in the Middle East by simply pointing the finger at Iran and Syria. This is another piece in a steady series of legislation passed in the House that intensifies enmity between the United States and Iran and Syria. My colleagues will recall that we saw a similar steady stream of provocative legislation against Iraq in the years before the US attack on that country.

I strongly believe that we must cease making proclamations involving conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States. We incur the wrath of those who feel slighted while doing very little to slow or stop the violence.

Worship

Prayer alone is not worship.

Worship is doing something for the sake of another. A greater Worship is when you do something for the sake of another and not expect a return for it in this life time. An even greater worship is when you do something for the sake of another and not expect a return or reward for it, ever. The satisfaction of doing something for another is by itself the reward.

Worship is forgiving another who has hurt you starting with your parents and ending with your children. Worship is also seeking forgiveness from others, starting with your parents and ending with your children.

Worship is, believing that being is enough. That being is better than not being. That being is its own reward. That to breathe and to see and to hear and to smell imposes an obligation of doing something especially for those who will come after us.

Khusro

The three trillion dollar war

Sample post

" When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line. "

" When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line. "

".. the Iraq war has been the most expensive war that we’ve fought of all of our wars, apart from World War II. World War II was, of course, a massive operation involving sixteen million Americans. And what is particularly striking about this war, and one of the things that leads to the long-term cost, is the very, very high casualty rate. In previous wars, in World War II and Vietnam and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. And now, the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat, and if you include all of those wounded in non-combat and diseased seriously enough to have to be medevaced home, it’s fifteen-to-one. So it’s a very significant difference".

Editorial Comment

I reproduce below an estimate done by Stiglitz in Dec, 2006, which I had circulated at that time;

"Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, estimates the true cost of the war at$2.267 trillion. That includes the government's past and future spending for the war itself ($725 billion), health care and disability benefits for veterans ($127 billion), and hidden increases in defense spending ($160 billion). It also includes losses the economy will suffer from injured vets ($355 billion) and higher oil prices ($450 billion)."

His latest estimate has upped the estimate to 3 trillion and he feels that this is a low number. If you google Stiglitz, his resume is so impressive that you will see that he needs to be taken seriously.
To put it in perspective 3 trillion is 21% of US GDP and the spending is not over. If compared to the original budget of 50 billion, the cost over run is staggering. If some one had said the US is spending 1 billion dollars a day on the Iraq war, I would have fallen off my chair. In fact according to Stiglitz, they are spending 9 billion a day.
Granted that some of this expense is in the future but all that means is that future generations will pay for it. Thirty thousand Americans wounded in combat and twice that number wounded in non combat will be on the streets of America trying to survive on a meagre Veterans budget.
If the three trillion were spent within America it would surely have paid back handsomely. If the three trillion were spent overseas, it could have earned the gratitude of billions of people for a very long time. Poverty, Global Warming, Literacy, Peacekeeping, there is no end of worthy causes which could have been handled successfully and made this a better world for all of us and this would have included getting rid of Terrorism. Even if 3 trillion was spent promoting Democracy in the Middle East, it was sure to have succeeded given time.

OK so we made a mistake. Who could have thought that the Iraqi's would take this so personally. Is there any one willing to step forward to say, this was my decision, the buck stops here and I will take responsibility? Not only is no one ready to step forward, they are or were ready to attack Iran.

There lies the problem. We learnt nothing from Vietnam and we have learnt nothing from Iraq. When I say we, I mean the American Public. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first take away their ability to learn from mistakes.

Khusro

Guests:
Joseph Stiglitz, Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist at the World Bank. He is the co-author of the new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Linda Bilmes, Professor of public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is co-author of the new book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to take an in-depth look at the cost of the Iraq war. Last week, President Bush rejected charges that the war in Iraq has hurt the US economy. He addressed the issue during an interview with Ann Curry on the Today Show.
ANN CURRY: Some Americans believe that they feel they’re carrying the burden because of this economy.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah, well—
ANN CURRY: The economy, they say, is suffering because of this war.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t agree with that.
ANN CURRY: You don’t agree with that? It has nothing to do with the economy, the war, the spending on the war?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t think so. I think, actually, the spending on the war might help with jobs.
ANN CURRY: Oh, yeah?
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yeah, because we’re buying equipment, and people are working. I think this economy is down because we built too many houses.
JUAN GONZALEZ: While President Bush claimed the war has nothing to do with the economy, one of the country’s leading economists has just published a book that puts an estimated price tag on the war in Iraq. The number may surprise you: $3 trillion.
That’s the estimate calculated by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and his co-author Linda Bilmes. According to the book, the Iraq War has become the second-most expensive war in US history, after World War II. For the past five years the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war.
In response to the $3 trillion price estimate, the White House has gone on the offensive. White House spokesperson Tony Fratto told reporters, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes join us now in our firehouse studio to discuss their new book. It’s titled The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Joseph Stiglitz was the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, professor at Columbia University and the former chief economist at the World Bank. Linda Bilmes is a professor of public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She served in the Department of Commerce in the Clinton administration.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Joseph Stiglitz, how did you come up with that price tag, $3 trillion?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the way you approach this problem is basically adding. You begin with the budgetary numbers. But what they claim as the cost of the Iraq war in the budget is not the full cost. There are the operational costs that everybody understands, but then there are costs hidden elsewhere in the defense budget. But then there are really some very big costs hidden elsewhere, like contractors that have been the subject of such concern. We pay their insurance through the Labor Department.
But the most important cost, budgetary cost, that we haven’t talked about publicly, that haven’t been talked about, are the costs of veterans—their disability, veterans’ healthcare—that will total hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decades. This war has had a huge number of injuries, and that will mount, the cost of caring for them, disability. 39 percent of the people fighting, the 1.6 million who have already fought, and if we continue, it will of course be more than that, are estimated will be—wind up with some form of disability.
Then you go beyond that budgetary cost to the cost of the economy. For instance, when somebody gets disabled, the disability pay is just a fraction of what the loss to their family, to the income that they could have otherwise earned. And then you go beyond that to the macroeconomic cost—the fact that the war has been associated with an increasing price of oil. We’re spending money on oil exports, Saudi Arabia, other oil-exporting countries. It’s money that’s not being spent here at home. There are a whole set of macroeconomic costs, which have depressed the economy. What’s happened is, to offset those costs, the Federal Reserve has flooded the economy with liquidity, looked the other way when you needed tighter regulation, and that’s what led to the housing bubble, the consumption boom. And we were living off of borrowed money. The war was totally financed by deficits. And eventually, a day of reckoning had to come, and now it’s come.
JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re going to get into quite a few of those, but I’d like to ask you about the oil, in particular, because obviously many critics initially, when the war began, criticized it as a war to dominate Iraq’s oil. But as you point out, the price of oil has skyrocketed from about $25 a barrel to $100 a barrel since the war began. And what portion of that rise—you also try to attribute to the actual Iraq war, right?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, we were very conservative in our book. When we say $3 trillion, that’s really an underestimate. We attributed, in our book, only $5 to $10 to the war itself. But if you look back, in 2003, futures markets, which take into account increases in demand, increases in supply—they knew that China was going to have increased demand, but they thought there would be increases in supply from the Middle East—they thought the price would remain at $25 for the next ten years or more. What changed that equation was the Iraq war. They couldn’t elicit the increase of supply in the Middle East because of the turmoil that we brought there. So we think, actually, the true numbers, not the $5 or $10 that we used, because we didn’t want to get in a quibble, but really a much larger fraction of the difference between $25 that it was at the time in 2003 and the $100 we face today.
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, the White House press spokesperson, Tony Fratto, said yesterday, “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.”
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, I think the White House lacks the courage to engage in a national debate about the cost of the Iraq war. The Joint Economic Committee has asked the White House to come down and discuss the numbers; they’ve refused. Security is important, and we don’t deny that. The question is whether this war has been the best way of obtaining the security. And no matter what you’re going to do—you know, what you think about security, you still have to look at the cost. The costs have been important, even for the way we’ve waged the war. The reason the administration presumably did not buy, for instance, the MRAPs, these special vehicles that would have reduced the number of deaths by a very large fraction, is economics. So, you know, no matter what one says, economics is important, and the American people have the right to have an understanding of what those costs are. When we went to war, they said it was going to cost $50 billion. We are now spending that money upfront every three months, and that’s not even including the cost of veterans’ healthcare and disability down the line.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to continue this discussion for the hour. Our guests are Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. They have just written a book called The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow. org, the War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to a clip of Andrew Natsios, the former administrator of USAID, the Agency for International Development. During an appearance on Nightline with Ted Koppel in April of 2003, Natsios predicted it would cost the United States $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq.
TED KOPPEL: I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no, no, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL: The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion. There have been—
TED KOPPEL: Alright, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers’ contribution, I do. This is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges—Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada—and Iraqi oil revenues. Eventually, in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
TED KOPPEL: I want to be sure that I understood you correctly. You’re saying that the top cost for the US taxpayer will be $1.7 billion, no more than that?
ANDREW NATSIOS: For the reconstruction. And then there’s $700 million in the supplemental budget for humanitarian relief, which we don’t competitively bid, because it’s charities that get that money.
TED KOPPEL: I understand. But as far as reconstruction goes, the American taxpayer will not be hit for more than $1.7 billion no matter how long the process takes?
ANDREW NATSIOS: That is correct. That is the plan, and that is our intention. And these figures of these outlandish figures I’ve seen, I have to say, there’s a little bit of hoopla involved in this.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Andrew Natsios in 2003. He, at the time, was head of USAID, the Agency for International Development. Our guests for the hour are Joseph Stiglitz, who won the 2001 Nobel economics prize, he’s a professor at Columbia University; and Linda Bilmes, she’s a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, professor of public finance, and former assistant secretary and chief financial officer at the US Department of Commerce. They have written a book together called The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.
Linda Bilmes, your response to Andrew Natsios?
LINDA BILMES: Well, we have actually spent now three times per—we spent three times per Iraqi what we spent per European in the Marshall Plan. And the amount that we have spent in trying to rebuild Iraq has far eclipsed what Andrew Natsios had said, obviously. But I think that the whole story about what happened in the reconstruction is one of the many, many tragedies of the Iraq situation.
Here, you had a situation where President Bush tried to do the right thing. I mean, he went to a very reluctant congress, and he said, “Look, we have to have the money to rebuild Iraq.” And this was in the summer of 2003. Congress said, “Why don’t we loan it?” or whatever, and he said, “No, no, have to have the money.” The money was enacted, and then $19 billion was allocated for the reconstruction of Iraq, available in September 2003, which then mostly was not spent. It was not spent, because for the next six months, Secretary Rumsfeld essentially refused to sign a letter to the Congress guaranteeing that the contracts would be let by competitive bidding. And there was, you know, a ridiculous kind of hold up in the Congress about this issue of the competitive bidding, which meant that by the next summer, very little of the money had been spent. The Office of Management and Budget had rolled back a lot of the money. And by that time, we had lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis. By that time—it was now a year later—electricity was far down, all the things that that rebuilding money was supposed to be for—rebuilding schools, replenishing electricity and basic services—was gone. So it was an enormous, enormously bungled and missed opportunity.
JUAN GONZALEZ: You talk in your book also—the enormous cost of these contracts and the private contractors that are there vis-a-vis actual American soldiers. I think you talk about security contractors making as much as $400,000, compared soldiers making—costing $40,000 to the government—not necessarily making that $40,000, but costing $40,000 to the government. This enormous explosion in terms of cost because of the privatization of so much of the actual war and occupation.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. And I think one of the problems is that the private contractors’ incentives often are not aligned with the national perspectives. For instance, let me give you an example. Going back to the issue of reconstruction, winning the hearts and minds, at the beginning of the war, the unemployment rate got up to 60 percent. It was in our interest to make sure that there were jobs for all the—as many Iraqis. But what did our contractors do? They brought in Filipinos, Nepalese, because they were cheaper. They were trying to minimize the short-run cost. But it wound up feeding the insurgency, because the unemployed young males, combined with the fact that we didn’t protect the caches of arms, was an explosive mixture which exploded.
The other thing that we discovered in the process of doing this kind of research is that when we talk about the upfront cost of the contractors, it doesn’t end there, because we have to pay the insurance for disability and death. But then, the insurance has a little clause. It says it excludes a hostile action. But, of course, when you’re in Iraq, most of the injuries and most of the deaths are hostile action. So the government winds up paying the death benefits and the disability benefits anyway. So it’s another example of really a largesse to the big business, and you can see the fact that there’s excess profits in terms of what’s happened to the stock price of the contractors, and most particularly of Halliburton.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go to Halliburton, the issue of comparing the Iraq war cost to previous wars, you’ve done that, Linda Bilmes, like World War II.
LINDA BILMES: Well, the Iraq war has been the most expensive war that we’ve fought of all of our wars, apart from World War II. World War II was, of course, a massive operation involving sixteen million Americans. And what is particularly striking about this war, and one of the things that leads to the long-term cost, is the very, very high casualty rate. In previous wars, in World War II and Vietnam and Korea, the number of wounded troops per fatality was about two-to-one or three-to-one. And now, the number of wounded troops per fatality is seven-to-one in combat, and if you include all of those wounded in non-combat and diseased seriously enough to have to be medevaced home, it’s fifteen-to-one. So it’s a very significant difference. And this difference compared to previous wars is, of course, you know, a great tribute to the medical care that they receive on the field and the enormous advances in the care provided at Landstuhl hospital in Germany and other places. But what it means is that the United States has a long-term cost of taking care of many, many thousands of disabled veterans for the rest of their lives.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, as you have reported previously, the numbers of those disabled veterans and wounded as a result of the war has been consistently downplayed or hidden by the military in terms of what the actual cost to the Veterans Administration and the government is as a whole. And, of course, we’re not even talking about the potential illnesses from depleted uranium or other environmental contamination in Iraq that will be for decades to come an issue that the world will have to deal with.
LINDA BILMES: Absolutely. And this is one of the really outrageous situations about trying to get information about this war, because even today, if you go to the official DOD website, what you will find is a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat. Now, the number of fatalities, which is approaching 4,000, is wounded in combat and non-combat. But if you want to find the non-combat wounded—and that includes, for example, soldiers who are injured when they’re driving their vehicles at night, because it’s unsafe to drive during the day; soldiers who are wounded when they are being transported between one place and another, who never would have been there otherwise—it’s much larger. It’s more than double. And that is a number which is very hard to get. We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to that number. It is impossible to sort of underestimate how difficult it is to get hold of information that should be completely in the public domain.
AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, I want to go to that point of using the Freedom of Information Act. You found out through this Freedom of Information Act request the government was keeping a second set of books?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: That’s right. I mean, one of the very disturbing things is that we went to war for democracy, and yet democracy is more than just having periodic elections. It really involves informed citizens being able to have perspectives on the important decisions. But to be informed, you have to know what is really going on. And that’s why it was, you know, so upsetting that we had to used the Freedom of Information Act to find out this or to find out, for instance, that while the government was saying, the President was saying, we’ll supply all the equipment that the military needs, back in early 2005 there were urgent requests for MRAPs, these vehicles that will resist the IEDs, these explosive device, and protect our soldiers, but because of wanting to keep the apparent cost down, they refused to order them.
And, of course, the total cost—and this is one of the important points we make in our book—the total cost is not just the upfront cost, but the cost that you have to face for decades later in terms of the injuries and, of course, the cost to the families. So, being penny-wise and pound-foolish means our country is suffering because of that kind of economic decision.
AMY GOODMAN: But I want to stay on this second set of books. So what is being told to the public is only half of the injured, is that right, Linda Bilmes?
LINDA BILMES: That’s right. And last year, after I published a paper on the cost to veterans, the then-Assistant Secretary for Health at the Pentagon phoned me and phoned my dean and said, “Where did you get these numbers?” And I said, “I got them from your website, which we now have access to.” And he said, “Oh, that can’t be.” And I said, “Well, look at your website.” And he said, “Well, fax me my own website.” So I literally faxed him his own website. And then he said, “Oh.” But—
AMY GOODMAN: Who was this?
LINDA BILMES: This was the Assistant Secretary of Health at the DOD, Winkenwerder, who left, was retired around the time that Gates came in. A number of people from that department were retired. He—
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Then they took down those websites.
LINDA BILMES: Yeah, but then, I mean—yeah, then they took down the websites, and there were websites at the Department of Veterans Affairs that were keyed into those websites, and then they directed the Department of Veterans Affairs to change the Veterans’ websites. And we only found out about this, because hundreds—hundreds— of veterans from all over the country started emailing me and calling me and saying, “Have you seen what’s going on?” So, I mean, we were in the situation where we were academics doing this research, veterans from all over the country watching these websites were coming to tell us this information.
But this kind of trickery has extended both to the budget and to the numbers in the war. And we see it right now in the President’s proposal for the FY09 veterans’ budget, where ostensibly the budget is being increased by $5 billion, but in fact, if you look at the fine print, they’re hoping to recoup over $3 billion by increasing the co-pays and all the fees on the veterans who need to use the services. And so, if you actually netted out, it’s only a $2 billion increase, which is less, when you consider the cost-of-living adjustment, than they had last year.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And you also detail in your book the same kind of flimflam going on with the soldiers who are recruited into the military, a bonus pay that they get that then, if they happen to be injured too soon when they get on the battlefield, they then have to pay back?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Yeah. I found that just absolutely astounding. You know, you’re doing this research, and you find things that—I say, “Linda, are you sure? This can’t be!” But they said—you know, the view is, they signed a contract to serve for three years. The fact that they get blown up after one month means they haven’t fulfilled their contract.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happens?
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: They have to pay back the money.
LINDA BILMES: Congress is changing this. They’ve intervened to change this. But, I mean, Congress has been intervening to change some of these problems. Right now, there are eighteen pieces of legislation before Congress and a number that have been passed based on our recommendations.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Another example that sort of highlights this kind of—you know, some of this may be bureaucratic misbehavior, but still it highlights the kinds of problems our veterans are facing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: It also highlights the total incompetence of the people that are running the operation.
JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Exactly, like, I mean, one of the things—you know, they check out helmets and other equipment, because they want them to be responsible. But they get—then they lose their helmet in an explosion. You know, they’re shipped out, they’re disabled, they’re in concussion. Somebody in the military will send them a bill for their helmet.
LINDA BILMES: It was the GAO study on that, which is unbelievable, about veterans being—hundreds and hundreds of veterans being chased around the country for small amounts of money that they allegedly owe, mostly related to pieces of equipment that they lost during serious injuries.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz in this national broadcast exclusive, as they reveal the cost of war, a cost they say is a conservative estimate. The Three Trillion Dollar War is the title of their book, The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. We’ll come back in our conversation with them in a minute.
[break]

Motherhood

There is no more important thing that we do in this life, than to bring forward the next generation.

There is no task more under recognised today then that of a mother.

There is no book that commands that this recognition be given than the Holy Quran.

When we speak of Women's Rights, we should first speak of giving this recognition to women both in material and even much more in non material terms.

Khusro

Let us talk about poverty

"if you take the whole world population, bring it to the United States, the density that you will create by putting six billion people in the United States, today density in Bangladesh is slightly higher than that." Mohd Yunus

"Rights cannot be substituted by credit. Rights need to be recognized as rights and collective rights to the common wealth of this planet—the atmosphere, the water, the seeds, the biodiversity. That needs a rights solution. Credit can come after that rights solution has been offered." Vandana Shiva

" Poverty is created by the system. The system includes everything, the institution, the concept, the policies and everything.. .."
".I am saying that the conceptual framework of capitalism itself is at fault. That’s what created all the problems. So we have to address that also."


Mohd Yunus

Muhammad Yunus is the first Nobel Peace Prize winner from Bangladesh. He has just come out with a new book called Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

Comment

How can we look at Capitalism as our economic model when it is anti the majority of the world? Is it a good system which is broken or is it a bad system which needs to be replaced ? Why blame Capitalism when greed and exploitation are second nature to humans? What weight should we give to social responsibility over self interest?

Right wing philosophy has always been that Poverty is the fault of the poor. They are poor because they are lazy. Left wing ideals are less judgemental and more sympathetic to the poor and believe in providing minimum social services for the poor.

Yunus and Shiva are socialists, who want to both reduce and if possible eliminate poverty. Capitialism is closest to the right wing ideology which dominates the business world but as Yunus points out Capitalism is a system which is seriously flawed. He is saying that Capitalism creates poverty.

Our understanding that Capitalism creates riches is in fact totally erroneous. In fact is does create riches but only for a small minority and for these people it creates riches beyond imagination. If 1% of the world has 80% of the worlds riches and controls 80% of the worlds resources then surely there is something seriously wrong with the worlds economic order. In fact so powerful is the role of money today that Capitalists control Democracy, the Media, Banks, Governments.

The fact that whether the country is the US, Europe, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, Public opinion is not represented in the Government. Governments everywhere are in conflict with public opinion and in sync with business interests.

Money has become god and the final arbiter of values because God has been driven out of the affairs of men. Secularism and Democracy have become agents in the service of Capitalism. If we think we live in a troubled world and can't make sense of it, part of the problem is our inability to challenge the Capitalist spin that we are subjected to all the time. Part of the problem is that we measure our values in terms of money.

Capitalism is a two headed monster that with one head believes in free markets and with other tries to control free markets to its ends. It is a system based on greed and exploitatoin and I have often wondered at it's claims of success and in moments of weakness looked at it with admiration. The subprime crises came out of Capitalism's desire to exploit the poor ( in their language people with poor credit). I say Capitalism advisedly because it was not the Banks alone. It was the Banks, the Insurance Companies, the Rating Agencies,the Retirement Funds, the Accounting Profession and the Regulatory Authorities acting in concert to cook the books and defraud not just the poor but also the Investor in the stock Market.

We have been here before when the "System" tried to manipulate silver ( 1980), the debts of Third World Countries ( 1983). the currencies of third world countries ( 1996), Enron ( 2001), Worldcom. Colonisations have all exploited the colonised, whether it was by the Ottomans, the British, The French, The Belgians, the Spaniards, the Dutch or the Americans. The colonisation of the American Indian or of Black Africa or of India never benefitted the colonised but enriched the coloniser beyond all reason.

The enslavement of one human being by another is a piece of our History and we have arrived here by those means. This does not mean that we are destined to follow that pattern. How can we as enlightened human beings continue with systems which we know to have serious detriments to fellow humans ( in fact the majority of them) and have serious detriment to our environment and future generations?

The progress that we have made is that the Chinese and the Indians are exploiting their own poor rather than before when the Americans had exploited the African by enslaving them. In Bagladesh, Yunus is promoting self sufficiency and entrepreneurship amongst the poor. Where no one is doing anything is the Islamic countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria and it is guaranteed that the future terrorists will come from here. The poorer or more devastated the country, the more it will be ripe for angry and frustrated people. It is strangely in the interest of the Capitalist to not exploit people any more otherwise the backlash will destroy exploiter and exploited.

Yunus and Vandana Shiva are in the forefront of people looking at alternatives from the point of view of the poor. They deserve our respect and attention. In fact Vandana Shiva's approach is even much more grass roots than Yunus . The rights of people to water are as fundamental as the rights to air. Today Capitalism is making a lot of money selling water and in due course will make a lot of money selling air, aftere polluting it.

Khusro

Two points of view

" One of the things that I would conclude is that there is obviously strong bias on the part of our media in their reporting of military deaths over any 5, 10 or 20 year period of time. The impressions they have tried to create about the deaths that have occurred under Bush, as it relates to the actual number killed, differs greatly from what they have tried to create under former administrations. The facts dispel the propaganda. I agree with you that any death is a tragedy. But Bush is not responsible for any more of them than any previous President in recent history.

I guess one of the ways you and I differ is that I do not see what is occurring in Iraq in such black and white terms.

Let's take the situation there. One of the reasons we were given to justify an invasion is that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It is obvious that Saddam did possess WMD's at one point because he used them to gas his own people, the Kurds. Many of those who today claim we had false information and were lied to by the administration are the same people (Hillary for example) who stated just the opposite at the time. Much of the media that reported on the risk we believe we faced because of the WMD's possessed by Saddam are now the very individuals who have twisted the whole thing around and ignore that they played any part at the time in justifying the premise in the first place. Because they can not now take the "heat" they are running for cover and pointing fingers at the administration. But let's suppose Saddam no longer had WMD because he had successfully moved them all into Syria. The question then becomes whether the world is better off or not with him gone. When we look at the situation in Iraq today, one would argue that we are not better off. Iraq is a mess, many have died and the obvious "culprit" according to many, including you, is Bush.

It can be argued, with hindsight, that we should have just left Saddam in power. Even though many of the people living in Iraq were oppressed, tortured, beaten and killed and they did not enjoy democratic rights at least the country was stable and the Christian community was left alone as you point out. But was Saddam a bad person and is the world better off without him? I think even you would agree that he was and we are. So we got rid of him and now we have US forces in Iraq. There is much instability and many suicide bombings. I guess you and I differ because somehow you now see us as the "bad" guys and I don't.

Not to over simplify the situation there but let's suppose Tarrytown, NY was ruled by a tyrant, citizens lived in fear, there were no democratic rights but there was at least "calm" in the streets. Along comes someone who throws the tyrant bum in the Hudson giving people their freedom. Now some real bad characters come on the scene from Scarsdale and elsewhere in the area who have some long seething hostilities towards some of their neighbors. They bomb the public square, kill a lot of people and start fighting with the folks who "liberated" the village. In this scenario, you place blame on the ones who were at least trying to do a good thing. I blame the "trouble makers" from the outside and radicals who live down the street. This is where you and I differ. I believe we were at least trying to do a noble thing. You seem to side with the "bad guys" who behave in vicious ways and blame the "good guys" who I think are trying to do something good. You say we were just after their oil. I say, we could have bought it for a hell of a lot less trouble and expense!! You do not seem to recognize or acknowledge that the ones blowing themselves and everybody else up are the real culprits. I don't think it is the American forces who are doing that. But maybe that is not what the New York Times is reporting out on the East Coast.

Another area where we differ is that, while I would like to live in a world where we can all sit around the campfire and sing "cumbaya", turn swords into plow-shares and make butter instead of guns, I recognize that there is real evil in this world and some real bad characters no matter how good and just we might be. Being nice to them just means you are being nice to them while they still make their plans to kill you. There are bad people in this world and the devil lives in some of them. We either bring the fight to get rid of them, to them, or they will bring it to us. It's just that simple. Going into Iraq was an attempt to bring the fight to the bad guys. Saddam was one of them. It is obvious that Iraq has many crazies in it and some real unsavory characters because not all of what is happening there is being done by outsiders. So we are fighting some bad elements there rather than waiting until they decide to engage us on our own turf. Now maybe we should have decided to take the "fight" elsewhere instead of Iraq. At least Saddam kept a lid on these "bad guys" because he didn't have all of this going on when he was in power. But these radical elements were still there and if we can eradicate some of that, now that we are there, the world will be a better place for it.

Have we made many mistakes over the years? Absolutely! Have we fought some wars that proved to be a waste of precious human blood? Certainly have. But did we enter into those situations with that knowledge and foresight or was it only apparent after the fact? Did we move forward in pursuit and defense of our beliefs around liberty and justice or because we were trying to conquer and claim lands for ourselves? I believe the former while I think you the latter. You suggest we are a conquering force and work to seize the lands we "invade". I do not believe that to be the case and our handling of Europe and Japan after WWII bears that out. We could have conquered and oppressed. Instead we liberated and invested time, money and resources to help them build and become self sufficient and free which they are today.

We can always sit back and play Monday morning quarterback. That's the easy and safe thing to do. But as our President, one who is charged with protecting our country, is it understandable in the face of what we experienced with 9/11, that he made a decision, in the interests of spreading democracy which he believes to be one of the best hopes for lasting world peace, to move to take a known tyrant off the world stage.

Another area where we differ is that you "heap" all the blame on Bush and cite chapter and verse of everything that occurs as if he has a direct hand in all of it. For instance, you cite Abu Graib or Water Boarding and seem to directly blame him. You are suggesting that someone at his level would know if some Private, in some far away prison is going to make a decision to put a leash on a prisoner and parade them around naked. You don't seem to realize that even in the best run, most highly respected organizations in the world, stupid people still do stupid things. Ever hear about some of the things that have occurred in the Catholic Church?? I am in no way justifying these actions. But for me to blame the Pope and call for his dismissal because of what some of his Cardinals or priests did in Boston is ludicrous! Or I could go on and rant and rave about how god awful the Catholic Church was during the Crusades and dredge up all of the sins of the past. But what sense would that make? We would all be better off dealing with the issues at hand.

You talk about the Christians fleeing to Syria or Jordan. Who are they fleeing? The Americans?? I think not! We're not the ones they are afraid of. But you blame "us", the ones who are there trying to institute democratic reforms. I understand this is happening because we are there and Saddam isn't but we are not the ones doing it. I blame the terrorists and extremists. You blame us. Dick, you keep saying you are a Republican but the logic here is that of a left wing liberal.

I could go on and argue a lot of other points Dick but I guess we just have some philosophical differences in how we see issues like these. The previous administration didn't go after these thugs and was viewed in a much different light but where did that get us? We had many attacks on our forces around the world and all the planning leading up to 9/11 occurred on someone else's watch. If we had been more aggressive then in dealing with issues like we now have around the world perhaps we could have avoided what occurred. At least we haven't had another attack on our soil since 9/11.

Thought from the "other side of the fence". Peace and love to all of the Cross household.

Tom

Richard,

Your former student sounds like a Fox News watching die hard Republican, which is about a third of the nation. Their view is that we are the good guys and most others (including the Europeans) are the bad guys. It is important to divide the world along these lines if you have designs on them. The people who can afford the luxury of such views are Imperial Powers who can enforce their point of view through being on the right side of the barrel of a gun.
This has justified the US in becoming the self imposed policeman of the world.

The problem is that this is 20th Century thinking in the 21st Century. The US, defeated in Vietnam and unable to declare victory in Iraq or Afghanistan is fast becoming a former Imperial Power. I do agree with your former student that Bush is not solely to blame for this. Successive Presidents have followed similar Imperial Policies and future Presidents ae likely to follow the same, although increasingly at greater and greater cost to us.

The fact is that the US is not as good or virtuous as we think, nor was Saddam as evil as we make him out to be. In fact as Dictators go, he was not at the top of the pile for vicious dictators. The US has done far more damage to Iraq then Saddam could ever have done if he was born again and tried for another 25 years. So the cost of removing Saddam was not worth destroying Iraq for.

The alternate point of view is that the US went into Iraq because of the Oil and to protect the interests of the State of Israel and this whole business of demonising the enemy is a spin designed to justify this to a gullible public. This is the real point, the public is too easily duped. How can you blame Bush, when the public lives in a cocoon and is the victim of a compliant media which serves the interests of the Corporate structure. The public deserves the leaders it gets.

The current demonising of Islam is the same strategy as employed in Iraq so as to go after Iran, another oil producing country not liked by Israel. Let the American public study Islam to find out for themselves that it is a great religion and that it's demonising is a travesty of good sense and insulting to over a billion Muslims of the world. People choose to live in ignorance at their own peril. Imagine what Muslims and others who know Islam think of the US when it produces stereo types made up in Tel Aviv. The image of the US in the rest of the world is not one of a benefactor as we would like to believe but of a bully who flouts International law, will stop at nothing to achieve it's ends including torture and the killing of women and children by the millions and believes in resolving issues by force rather than talking to people. These are realities that the American public chooses to minimise or ignore.

The destruction of Iraq did not start with Bush. It started with Bush Sr. and continued under 8 years of Clinton. Bush Sr. attacked Iraq not to take it over but to weaken it so that it would not be feared by Israel. That is why Saddam was left alone. Subsequently after destroying the Iraqi Air Force, Iraq was subjected to repeated bombings and economic sanctions which did weaken it and subjected its citizen to poverty and sickness. Millions of Innocent Iraqi's including a very large number of children died from malnutrition or lack of attention when they fell ill. For over 12 years Iraq was humiliated, contained and laid seige to. The UN made sure through Hans Blitz that it never developed any weapons of mass destruction and after it was weakened, depleted and was no threat to any one Bush Jr. gave it a taste of "shock and awe" and this time walked into Iraq with the idea of annexing it for it's oil. There was no exit strategy because there was no intention of leaving.

Killing millions of Iraqis and making Millions more homeless does not seem to bother the American public. While we sit in our luxurious homes and watch the Super Bowl, it is convenient to brand these people as faceless scum of the earth and to say to ourselves, the world is surely better off without them. What sort of people have we become?

No one can explain to me how a great nation like the US allows itself to be dictated by a few million Jews and the Zionist nation of Israel. Hats off to the Jews and Israel but what does this say about the American public? How can we spend trillions of dollars of our money and put our soldiers in harms way and create an economic recession so that the people of Israel can sleep easy at night. It was not that Iraq was a threat to them, it was just a passing whim. They did not like the tone of Saddam's voice. I am not even talking about the terror that Israel spreads amongst helpless, homeless, economically bankrupt Palestinians. That is another story.

If we have become a nation without morals, standards and ethics and the only thing that matters to us is economic well being then let us be honest enough to say it. If the end justifies the means for us and we are prepared to kill maime and torture millions because we feel that in the end our cause is just then let us be honest enough to say it. Or have we also lost our honesty.

Let us not say that we will make this world a better place, let us say that we are in it for ourselves. It is survival of the fittest. Let us call it what it is. It is not a war on terror. It is the war of the strong against the weak. Then let those who want to be on the side of the weak, stand up and be counted. The weak are the victims, let us not call the victims the aggressor.

Khusro