Cost of Iraq war???????

[JohnC]

Two modest proposals for an equitable solution in Iraq:

1) As we've now managed to turn Iraq into a welfare state, without anything resembling a working infrastructure (although Halliburton and others were paid billions for a "reconstruction" that isn’t), and it's totally dependent on the billions we're still pumping into it, let’s just go ahead and annex it and make it the 51st state. Dubya still has one year left in office, so he still has plenty of time to rig this, probably as easily as his “election” was.

Iraq becoming the 51st state would make as much or more sense as when Alaska became the 49th state, and for several of the same reasons (Oil, oil and oil; and location, location, location). Never mind that the indigenous population initially might be a bit unhappy about becoming Americans, just as the native Alaskans were, they (the Iraqi's) could eventually be persuaded this is in their best interests. And what better way to boost the US's oil reserves and solve our energy crisis? Just imagine what it will do for the US economy and the value of the dollar? Shoot, we could become an oil exporter again, and finally tell the Saudis to get stuffed…..

2) Then Dubya would be appointed as Iraq’s first governor-in-residence in return for a job well done over the last eight years in the White House...... Now this might take a bit of friendly arm twisting, but eventually he would be persuaded to see the light. After all, this would finally give him the opportunity to experience a foreign culture first hand (something he sorely lacked prior to being appointed president). And it would also give the former Leader of the Free World an unprecedented opportunity to prove that Texas “democracy” does work in the middle east (of course it works - they're our 51st state now!) Besides that, the Republican party probably wouldn't mind loosing him to the Iraqis, as it were. After all, they really don't want a loose cannon after retirement, spouting vacuous gibberish without benefit of a press secretary to stuff a sock in it. Bad for the party’s image, after all. Who knows, after awhile he might even decide to swap his Levi’s and Tony Lama’s for a galabeya and sandals, and start spouting “Salaam Alakum y’all”. With his newfound attire, he’d also finally learn the hidden meaning behind “Hang Loose”, “Let it all Hang Out”, “Be Cool”, and my personal favorite “Up Tight”. And we thought all these hip phrases were invented in the West, when in reality they have been closely guarded Arab secrets.

Once our boy George is firmly, err “in place”, and the new 60” oil pipeline from Baghdad to Houston (constructed by Halliburton) is pumping $500 million dollars of crude into the US economy every day, and all the Iraqis have been convinced that Texas democracy is a good thing, and that they will like it, then we’ll start on Phase 2, which is their “conversion”. We’ll export Jim Baker and the other TV evangelists and turn them loose to fleece the Iraqi’s of the rest of their money.

Can I get an “AMEN”?

 

[Cliff Beer]

The "cost" of this war is staggering, both in terms of dollars and lives - I don't think anyone reasonably debates this fact. As has been pointed out above, additional relevant data points are a) what is the future further cost to conclude the conflict, and b) what would have been the cost of inaction? Not easy things to quantify and, again, I doubt anyone reasonably debates the difficulty of such calculations. For example, many of the soldiers in Iraq would have been paid and supported anyway (regardless of involvement in Iraq or not) because they were/are part of the regular commited armed forces - so, does this count as a "cost" of the war or just the regular ongoing cost of a ready military?

One thing seems relatively clear to me: Saddam Hussein had to go. He was a crazy that was looking to acquire nuclear capabilities. It seems apparent now that he wasn't very far down the road to achieving that goal, however, had he been allowed to continue in power I don't doubt he would have achieved it within a few years. There's always someone willing to sell the knowledge, technology and equipment for the right price. A nuclear-capable Saddam Hussein would have been an enormous threat to world peace and economic stability - how do we measure the cost of that? Perhaps the formula looks like the following: the percentage likelihood of utilization of Saddam controlled nukes multiplied by the cost to life and world economics of such successful utilization. That's a pretty big number that might just dwarf the various cost assessments being suggested now as the cost of involvement in the Iraq war.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Democracy is the formal icing on a preexisting cake of egalitarianism, economic opportunity, religious tolerance, and constant self-criticism. It cannot appear in the Muslim world until men and women demolish the medieval forces of tribalism, authoritarian traditionalism, and Islamic fundamentalism.

The catastrophe of the Muslim world is also explicable in its failure to grasp the nature of Western success, which springs neither from luck nor resources, genes nor geography.

Like third-world Marxists of the 1960s, who put blame for their own self-inflicted misery upon corporations, colonialism, and racism—anything other than the absence of real markets and a free society—the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world’s inferiority towards the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco.
Government spokesmen in the Middle East should have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression, and cultural exchange.

Tragically, the immediate prospects for improvement are dismal, as the war against terrorism has further isolated the Middle East. Travel, foreign education, and academic exchanges — the only sources of future hope for the Arab world — have screeched to a halt.
All the conferences in Cairo about Western bias and media distortion cannot hide this self-inflicted catastrophe — and the growing ostracism and suspicion of Middle Easterners in the West.
But blaming the West for the unendurable reality is easier for millions of Muslims than admitting the truth.
Billions of barrels of oil, large populations, the Suez Canal, the fertility of the Nile, Tigris, and Euphrates valleys, invaluable geopolitical locations, and a host of other natural advantages that helped create wealthy civilizations in the past now yield an excess of misery, rather than the riches of resource-poor Hong Kong or Switzerland.

That is not the the fault of the West. The Muslim world has their blame and hate list out.

There is only one problem, they are not on it!

 

[Paul W]

Anybody seen Bin Laden ?

 

[David Briggs]

We are all agreed that something must be done, but the approach we are currently using is not very cost effective. Each Evildoer that is sent to Paradise is costing millions, we need to get back to a more basic type of warfare.
Back in the Big One(WWII) a low tech but highly cost effective approach (fire bombing and nuking population centers) was taken that resulted in the deaths of millions of our adversarys, all of whom have been good world citizens ever since.
Please do not take these comments to infer that I think that if the Terrorists homes, families and cultural centers were at risk that they would think twice about attacking the West.
Pete, much of your commentary is right on about the root causes but the solution resides in the hearts and minds of people who are trained to see us as the source of all their woes, and I don't see that ever changing.
IMHO

 

[ChrisL]

Before you can propose a solution you must first understand the problem. Unfortunately the issue has been so deliberately clouded by propaganda and prov ado that the problem is still anything but clearly understood.

And it is easy to tell who have been the most gullible. They are those who have been so easily scared $h1tless by the lies, made so frightened by shadows, that they were happy to send someone's sons and daughters to their death, only coming out long enough to yell patriotic slogans.

The issue was never about WMDs, it was never about freedom, it was never about spreading democracy and it was never about the defense of a nation. But it was frighteningly easy for our political leaders to use the actions of some criminal extremists to push the racist and patriotic buttons of those who would be easily lead. That's all they needed to conjure up support of an otherwise unsupportable war.

 

[Chris P.]

Dean - I get my facts from various news sources. I don't read Moveon; that's your problem - you have put me on the left before you even know who I am. That's the problem with trying to discuss political issues with people like you - you talk about facts but ignore them yourself. I can see it is impossible having a useful debate with you so I'm done.

And my stance on god? I'm an agnostic. And something I KNOW you will not be able to accept but it centers around FACTS: I believe that technically everyone is an agnostic whether they like it or not because nobody has the FACTS to prove the existence or nonexistence of a higher being.

chrisL - I believe you are correct.

 

[David Briggs]

We have lost focus, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, did we attack Australia? No we went after the Japanese. after WWII from Korea on we seem to only become effective after years of provocation, the Vietnam war was fought in the south, even though we knew where the aggressors came from, peace() was not acheived until Nixon finally released the B52's over North Vietnam. Strangely enough, once their ports were nuetralized and all above ground power plants, dams, bridges fuel depots, missile sites etc were destroyed or rendered impotent and North Vietnamese began to die in large numbers then it was time to stop.
We are doing the same thing again, how many Afgani's or Iragi's were involved in 9/11?
Do we know where the perpetrators came from? Yes, have we done anything to those countries? No
As long as they can strike us without a direct and proportionate response(with all that we have done since 9/11 have we done anything that equates to the loss of the World Trade Center and 3.000 American lives?), remember the pictures of dancing multitudes in the streets of cities thru out the Muslim world after the towers fell?
All those people and their Icons are still there.
I don't advocate further killing and would love to see this stop but history tells me that it is wishful thinking to proceed on present course.
Anyway, I would rather focus on my GT and my Indycar and the rest of my life.
IHMO
Dave

 

[Duncan Potter]

There is nothing wrong with burning up others oil and keeping ours in reserve. There is everything wrong with depending on others oil for our economic way of life. It gives them a stranglehold on our economy.

When we were the preeminent economy in the world, we could get away with it because they needed us as a customer. That is not as true now. China, India, and the EU are now viable alternate customers. That makes us and our dollars increasingly less important to the oil exporters.

Drill in ANWR? I think it is inevitable. The last estimate I saw was that the entire ANWR reserve would supply our oil needs for six months. What do we do after that?

Oil is a finite resource. There is less in the ground every day, and the demand for it is growing every day. There are two choices:

Keep using it like we do now and get what we need by outbidding everyone else till we go broke or invading oil producers until we go broke or

Figure out different ways to procure and use the energy we need.

We don't own the world. We don't own the world's oil. We can't afford to buy it. We can try to steal it, but world domination has never, ever worked before in human history, and it sure as hell won't work now.

 

[DaveM]

Where is bin Laden? He's laughing his ass off at America spending $1 Trillion plus in Iraq and $100/barrel oil. He doesn't need to stage another attack in America he can just watch us bankrupt ourselves. What happens when China stops buying T bills to finance all this debt? What happens when Cheney bombs Iran? $200/barrel +? Notice what's going on with the dollar? Does anyone ever ask why so many Arabs hate America? Think it might be smarter to spend money on helping third world people so they don't become the next wave of suicide bombers? America can't solve all the world's problems, but you can't bomb 1.2 billion Muslims into the stone age.

 

[Ian K]

Oil dependency the reason we're there???? Really?? Hmmm...if only we could have utilized our own oil resources over the years. But drilling in Alaska would be trading animals lives for American soldiers and Iraqis lives. That just wouldn't work out well...I mean what would PETA say? Better to be at war for oil.

Oil is a major reason why we're there. And not because we want it all for ourselves, but to
keep the market stable.

Iraq has, according to 20 year old reports, 112 billion barrels of oil. This makes them the number
two source behind Saudi Arabia. Due to wars and sanctions,there are plenty of areas still
unexplored. Conservative estimates put the total at around 250 billion. However, only has
2000 wells (Texas has around a million), and only produces about 3.5 million barrels/day (Saudi
Arabia produces over 10 million/day, the US is number three at about 8 million/day). Yet,
Iraq has one of the lowest overhead costs to produce. It is estimated that they could easily
have ramped up to 10 million/day if Saddam ignored sanctions, and it appeared he was going
to - and was cutting deals with France, Germany, and others (who, oddly, were very vocal
against the war). By flooding the market, and undercutting OPEC pricing, the market would
have been severely rocked.

Also, Alan Greenspan's recently released memoirs pretty much state that oil was the major
reason we went into Iraq - and his attempt to clarify does nothing to dismiss it.

Another memoir coming out is Scott McClellan's (ex White House aide for Bush and Cheney), who
admits to lying to the press about the leak of Valerie Plame's name did not involve Rove
or Libby. He also mentions that Bush asked him to lie due to the credibility he lost by not
finding any WMDs.

Ian

 

[Mark Worthington]

Pete, your post concisely explains much of the xenophobia of the Arab and Muslim world. Well said.

The issue was never about WMDs, it was never about freedom, it was never about spreading democracy and it was never about the defense of a nation. But it was frighteningly easy for our political leaders to use the actions of some criminal extremists to push the racist and patriotic buttons of those who would be easily lead. That's all they needed to conjure up support of an otherwise unsupportable war.

Well played, Chris. By innuendo and extension, you have characterized those who supported or who continue to support military action as a combination of gullible or racist flag-wavers.

 

[Russ Noble]

One of the most heartening things about this thread is that Americans are now beginning to see what was obvious to the rest of the world from day one.

Not so long ago, this subject would have brought a broadside of unthinking patriotic support for the politicians actions....

However your politicians have now got your country and your soldiers firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place and it's going to take some pretty slick manoeuvring to extract from the situation.

John Cribb's tongue in cheek solutions are in fact pretty close to a statement of the perceptions of some parts of the rest of the world as to America's intents in their ideal world! As an American spending a lot of time close to the area, he will have picked up on this.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Chrisl, You like a lot of others keep saying that Saddam never had WMD and the issue wasn't about WMD it is about oil. Well sure oil was and is a motivator, but just because WMD were not found does not mean they did not exist.

Saddam played the UN off the break for years, ignoring resolution after resolution. And that bunch of space wasting, cocktail drinking dinner partying wankers did nothing.

Saddam had plenty of time to move his WMD into Syria.

Fact; he used gas, a WMD against his own people the Shiites. So he definitely had WMD at that time. Conveniently forgotten by some.

Refugees are returning to Iraq as I write this according to the BBC. There is light at the of the tunnel, people are beginning to feel relatively safe.

If you get your wish and we withdraw out troops before Iraq has a police and defense force capable of maintaining a semblance of law and order, the place will descend into tribal war and many, many more innocents will go to Allah.

 

[Chris P.]

Pete, it's fairly well known and accepted that Saddam received his poison gas from the U.S. Remember who he was fighting - the Kurds who were backed by Iran. We were (and still are) against Iran. We used Saddam as a proxy to fight Iran to try and keep our hands clean. Supposedly we even had troops over there as well who basically sat and watched. Then we put him on trial for it and hung him for it. If all of that is correct, America is just as guilty.

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

Pete, it's fairly well known and accepted that Saddam received his poison gas from the U.S. Remember who he was fighting - the Kurds who were backed by Iran. We were (and still are) against Iran. We used Saddam as a proxy to fight Iran to try and keep our hands clean. Supposedly we even had troops over there as well who basically sat and watched. Then we put him on trial for it and hung him for it. If all of that is correct, America is just as guilty.

Well that depends on whether you believe sensationalist press reports or your own Senate enquiry.

Below is an excerpt from your Conressional record Sept 20th, 2002.



Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings. Mr.
Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq
to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during
the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the
possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld: Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no
knowledge of United States companies or government being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons.

 

[Dave Wood]

Not a Liberal or Pacifist, but have been against this crap from the beginning. As a Free American, that does not accept King or Dictators, I resent that our idiot leaders can irresponsibly send our kids into war without a declaration of war ( has not been, only the use of the war powers act....treasonous ba$tard$) and then when one gets killed in that mirk, we can't pull out because it dishonors them...BS. It is more dishonorable to waste the lives of our soldiers in actions that have nothing to do with our Freedom. It is exactly the fact that we have stretched out military resources everywhere that they were cut back HERE where defense should have been. This allowed any action taken by terrorists.
While the debate over whether we should be there draws out longer, I will tell you one fact that is indisputable. As we use our scarce resources to "develop" third world nations into industrial nations we are funding just one more competitor for the oil reserves around the world. Basic economics is supply and demand. So we use our money to develop our competitors for that same oil, making the prices go higher. This allows the washington insider idiots to then point at the oil companies when it is them that have set up the circumstances for paying more for oil. Eliminating the other nations out of it, we are basically in a ever increasing competion with our military for oil. The Military is fueled by oil, I bet there has been as much oil consumed over in that pit every year as is used in the economy that funds the military. So we are in effect ,once again paying, for the oil that creates the increase cost at the pumps... there is only so much to go around. Over 20 years military experience and I live by Eisenhower's final words before leaving office " Beware of the Military industrial complex". But I know his Liberal philoshophy and WW2 draft dodger status make that seem highly unbelieveable.

 

[Ian K]

Well that depends on whether you believe sensationalist press reports or your own Senate enquiry.

Below is an excerpt from your Conressional record Sept 20th, 2002.



Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding these hearings. Mr.
Secretary, to your knowledge, did the United States help Iraq
to acquire the building blocks of biological weapons during
the Iran-Iraq War? Are we, in fact, now facing the
possibility of reaping what we have sown?
Rumsfeld: Certainly not to my knowledge. I have no
knowledge of United States companies or government being
involved in assisting Iraq develop chemical, biological or
nuclear weapons.

Just because Rumsfeld "claims" he didn't know (and we all know
that Rumsfeld is a paradigm of truth), Iraq's report to the UN
lists the US as a supplier of some of the chemicals used to create
the weapons used against the Kurds. Leaked documents point to
the fact that thiodiglycol, a substance needed to manufacture
mustard gas, was among the chemical precursors provided to Iraq
from U.S.companies such as Alcolac International, Inc and Phillips.

Even more astonishing, the use of WMDs in Halabja was linked to
Iran and not Iraq (Hussein was not charged for those deaths in
the tribunal), and that the info about Halabja was the basis for the
WMD claim in 2003. The DIA report points the finger at Iran, and
it was only recently that the CIA did a 180 and pointed the finger
back at Iraq, presumably to justify the search for WMDs in Iraq.

However, it is agreed that although the US did supply some chemicals
to produce various WMDs, the US was one of a handful of countries
that did so, and the US did not assist in the development of WMDs
(West Germany has been fingered for that). Also, the countries that
supplied the largest quantities of materials have been identified as
Singapore, Netherlands, Egypt, India and West Germany.

However, if you want more Senate Testimony regarding US involvement,
it's not that hard to find. In 1992 Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas testified
that the Bush administration intentionally supplied Iraq with US defense
tech, and in 1994, Senator Riegle of Michigan testified that large
shipments of dual-use biological and chemical agents were shipped to
Iraq. And then there's Col. Walter Lang's 2002 interview with the NY Times
where he says that "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not
a matter of deep strategic concern ... we were desperate to make sure that
Iraq did not lose."

Of course, there is also Rumsfeld's 1983 visit to Iraq as Reagan's envoy.

Ian

 

[Pete McCluskey.]

I suppose you will tell me that this guy a Dutchman, was an Agent with the C.I.A. And Rumsfeld had him over for dinner.




Saddam's 'Dutch link'

The Iraqi regime used chemical bombs in a number of attacks

Frans van Anraat was living openly under his own name when he was arrested in an Amsterdam suburb in late 2004, after an international investigation.
Now 63, he has become the first man convicted in connection with alleged war crimes committed against Kurds in Iraq and Iran.
Van Anraat was convicted of complicity in war crimes but cleared of genocide.
He arrived home in the Netherlands in 2003, ending decades of involvement with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Previously, he had fled from Italy to Iraq in 1989.
His relationship with the deposed Iraqi leader led Dutch prosecutors to accuse him of directly supplying thousands of tons of base materials for chemical weapons used in the 1980s.
Halabja massacre
The United Nations suspected van Anraat was a major chemical supplier to the regime.
Some of those chemicals were allegedly used in the 1988 bombing of Halabja in northern Iraq, which killed an estimated 5,000 civilians in a single day.
The attack on the mainly Kurdish town was part of Saddam Hussein's wider campaign against the Kurds and was one of his worst atrocities.
Van Anraat will now serve 15 years in prison for his role in the supply chain.

This was not my main business, this was something I did in passing

Frans van Anraat


Chemical weapons were also used by the Iraqi army against Iranian forces in their 1980-1988 war.
Van Anraat, dubbed "Chemical Frans", did not deny supplying the chemicals, but says he did not know what they were to be used for.
In a 2003 interview with Dutch television program Netwerk, van Anraat said: "This was not my main business, this was something I did in passing," the Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.
"Somewhere once back then, I got the request whether I could deliver certain products to them, which they needed," he said.
"And because I had a very good relationship with the [Iraqi] oil ministry, and that's where the request came from, I tried to see if I could do it. And that was successful and we did deliver some materials."
Long investigation
However, prosecutors alleged that van Anraat was aware of the final purpose for the materials he supplied.
"From different sources it can be deduced that the suspect was aware of the destination and the final purpose for the base materials supplied by him," the prosecutor's office told the AFP news agency.

Thousands of people died in the bombing of Halabja


Among the chemicals van Anraat was accused of supplying was thiodiglycol, a chemical solvent used in the textile industry and in the manufacture of mustard gas.
He was found guilty of arranging 36 shipments - a total of 538 tons - from the US via the Belgian port of Antwerp, through Aqaba in Jordan to Iraq.
Prosecutors said van Anraat had been a suspect since 1989, when he was arrested in Milan at the request of the US Government.
He was released pending a decision on his extradition, and fled to Iraq, where he remained until 2003.
After the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, he returned to the Netherlands. Media reports suggest his bags were packed when Dutch police entered his home to arrest him in December 2004. He was thought to be the first Dutchman to face genocide charges, but was cleared on those counts, despite the court ruling that the chemical attack on the Kurds was genocide.

 

[Dean Lampe]

Pete, sorry to leave you hanging by yourself for so long. I am also posting for the last time on this thread.

ChrisL you are condescending as are most of your liberal left zealots. Thats OK. Believe in God or not. I don't care. Some things can't be experienced with the five senses. Its America (at least were I stand) and you are free to spew what ever propaganda you believe. You and those like you can never get past your Bush hatred to see the facts like Pete has laid out. Yet you are willing to stake you reputation on sensationalist journalism. I have great friends who have watch the war unfold through the cross hairs of their sniper rifles. After 3 tours in Baghdad, they tell me it is bad but getting better, that the Iraqis have really stepped up. You wont here that on the news because they hate Bush as much as you do. You can't debate with me because your emotion clouds your judgment. Thats OK too. You and the rest of the Bush haters here have become what the few wealthy secular progressives extreme leaders have created. You have drank the Cool Aid of the anti-war elitist who want global government and input from all nations to dictate how our country should be ran. I feel sorry for you but me and my friends will stand together and protect your right to be who you are.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving let me close this debate by sharing what I am thankful for.
I am thankful that I married my high school sweet heart so long ago.
I am thankful my boys say "yes Sir" and "Yes mam"
I am thankful for the cornucopia of life I have been given by God.
I am thankful that I live here, in the United States.

And I am thankful for the lives that have sacrificed so we can freely debate these issues.

Have a good weekend everyone, thanks for the lively debate.
Dean