“The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.” – Harry Truman, as quoted in Plain Speaking : An Oral Biography of Harry S Truman (1974) by Merle Miller, p. 26.
Senator Lieberman, Secretary of State Clinton, and former UN Ambassador John Bolton have resumed rhetoric of a United States attack upon Iran. As my other articles have demonstrated, that rhetoric is false and intentional propaganda attempting to justify another US War of Aggression. We should understand that the united states has admitted to legally defined torture. America IS the US Constitution and the morals found within the Declaration of Independence that all people are created equal with unalienable rights given each of us by God. Those who defend torture stand against the US Constitution and against the Declaration of Independence. Those who reject the evidence so many of us have documented of US Wars of Aggression are against the US Constitution. These people are acting, whether in ignorance or in deliberate evil, for fascism. You cannot be for the US government, as defined by our constitution, and be for torture and Wars of Aggression. The following is from my brief, “War with Iraq and Afghanistan, rhetoric for war with Iran.” Please use this information in any way helpful to build a brighter future.
Cost in money and lives: Current war expenditures are now ~$15 billion/month.[1] According to Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor, Linda Bilmes, the long-term costs of the Iraq war as of Spring, 2008, are conservatively figured at over $3 trillion, ~$30,000 each for the ~100 million American households.[2] Adjusted for inflation, this is now the second most costly war in US history.[3] And remember, in the prelude to war when the American public began wondering how much this war would cost if the US acted without the UN sharing the bill, President Bush’s lead economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, reported to the Wall Street Journal that costs could exceed $200 billion to the American taxpayers. The Bush administration quickly refuted his professional estimate, promising that the war would cost no more than $60 billion, but providing no evidence for this claim.[4] Mr. Lindsey resigned shortly thereafter.
The war has fraudulently allowed at least tens of billions of US taxpayer money to disappear without effective oversight or prosecution.[5] While this information is generally suppressed by mainstream media, the good news is that it’s still legal to communicate. In contrast, Americans who spoke against World War I in any way were prosecuted. This included US Senator Richard Pettigrew, who wrote extensively of the war profiteering of US companies at the expense of the US taxpayers.[6]
According to the John Hopkins School of Public Health published in the esteemed Lancet Medical Journal using the best academic and professional methodology, as of October, 2006, over 650,000 more Iraqis have been killed since the US invasion than would be expected in pre-war conditions.[7] Despite this being the only peer-reviewed study, the US government dismisses this study without giving reason, saying that less than 100,000 Iraqis have died.[8] In December 2007, the number of violent Iraqi deaths is probably over 1.2 million (about 20,000 per month).[9] From these deaths, the Iraqi government reports that five million children have become orphans; horrific even if overestimated by a factor of two.[10]
A 2008 UN report documents over 800,000 displaced children, most of whom are so impoverished that they don’t have access to clean water.[11] There are now about 2.8 million displaced Iraqis within the country, having fled from their homes to escape sectarian violence.[12] In addition, the war has caused over 2 million Iraqis to flee their country, 7.7% of their population,[13] with many of the most desperate families using their young girls and women for prostitution.[14] The unemployment rate in Iraq is 60-70%.[15] Getting clean water is a daily struggle, and sanitation is a nightmare with 250 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the water system daily.[16]
Iraq has a population of 26 million. Those percentages translated to the US population of 300 million would be as if another country came to “liberate” us, built 48 permanent military bases over four years, causing the violent deaths of over 12,000,000 Americans, forcing 23 million Americans to leave the US, and creating over 30 million Americans to become homeless.
A comparison to California’s 34 million population: Indonesia liberated us, but the ensuing violence is killing 30,000 Californians each month, a total of about 1.6 million. To translate to my city of La Cañada Flintridge's (LCF) 20,000 population: the city of Riverside “rescued” us from my friend, Mayor Steve DelGuercio. Riverside’s government promised to stay until they restore order, but the violence claims 15 La Cañada lives a month, with over 50 wounded (conservatively assuming ~5 wounded for every kill in Iraq; half the US troop ratio of over 10:1). Since 2003, close to 1,000 LCF residents have died in car bombs, drive-by-shootings, and general violence, with 5,000 wounded. Four thousand of us have fled our homes, about half leaving LCF, and about 2,000 homeless within LCF.
Finally, on a scale at La Canada High School (LCHS) that I use in teaching my 12th grade US Government students: after being taken over by the LAPD, intra-school wars kill 1-2 students a month, wounding ~15. The class of 2009 will have seen just under 100 of their LCHS classmates killed since their 8th grade year, with one quarter of you having been wounded. The new principal elected under the supervision of the invading power assures us that their “surge” of troops and Blackwater’s private military company is working, LCHS is now safer, and they’ll stay until they defeat our “terrorists.” One in every 20 LCHS students has been killed since “liberation.” Thirty-five percent of LCHS students have had a parent killed, over 600 of you. Any of us can be labeled a “terrorist suspect,” detained indefinitely without habeas corpus or communication to friends and family, and be tortured[17] (controlled drowning, naked in 45° F. cells for days, sleep and food deprivation for days, shackled in painful positions for days, threats to sexually assault and torture your family members, and if Abu Ghraib tactics are included: sodomizing with broom handles and lights, forced homosexual acts, rape, pouring on phosphoric acid, smearing faces and bodies in feces, etc.). The mayor of Los Angeles tells the public (with decreasing credibility) that LAPD needs to stay for the safety of the students because LCHS would become more violent if they left, and that expanding their “War on Terror” to CVHS is “on the table” because their “terrorists” are also attacking LAPD.
Over 4,100 American troops have been killed in the War on Terror, with over 30,000 wounded, as of mid-July, 2008 according to official government statistics.[18] CBS News commissioned an extensive study to measure how many US military veterans are committing suicide. Their report: over 6,000 a year.[19] Among active duty soldiers, over 580 have committed suicide since the war began.[20] The Veterans Affairs Department received over 22,000 calls from desperate veterans in its first year of opening a suicide hotline.[21] Over 10,000 active American troops are diagnosed with the most severe classification of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,[22] with one in eight returning troops reporting symptoms.[23] There are increasing reports that returning veterans are not receiving proper care for PTSD and other ailments, as the suicide numbers of CBS suggest.[24]
The endgame for US occupation of Iraq was legislated by the Iraqi Parliament on November 27, 2008. Under the Status of Forces Agreement, all 150,000 US troops will withdraw from all cities, towns, and villages by June 30, 2009 and remain upon their bases unless authorized to leave by Iraq’s government. All US troops shall withdraw from Iraq by December 31, 2011. Blackwater and other US security firms shall be subject to Iraq law rather than legal immunity after the end of 2008.[25]
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” - Mohandas Gandhi, “Non-violence in Peace and War”
“This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it. Considering that the people of this country are not having a very comfortable time, you can't perhaps, blame them for being somewhat callous about suffering elsewhere, but the remarkable thing is the extent to which they manage to be unaware of it. Tales of starvation, ruined cities, concentration camps, mass deportations, homeless refugees, persecuted Jews — all this is received with a sort of incurious surprise, as though such things had never been heard of but at the same time were not particularly interesting. The now-familiar photographs of skeleton-like children make very little impression. As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses.”
[1] Pincus, W. War Costs $15 Billion a Month, GOP Senator Says. Dec. 27, 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/26/AR2007122601542.html?hpid=moreheadlines .
[2] For more background, Stiglitz homepage: http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/ .
[3] SF Chronicle. Coile, Z. Only World War II was Costlier than Iraq War. March 18, 2008. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/17/MNBVVL9GK.DTL .
[4] Raw Story. Byrne, J. Price of Iraq War Now Outpaces Vietnam. March 18, 2008: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Price_of_Iraq_war_now_outpaces_0318.html , Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lindsey , and Iraq Foundation. Bumiller, E. White House Cuts Estimate of Cost of War with Iraq. Jan. 2, 2003: http://www.iraqfoundation.org/news/2003/ajan/2_whitehouse.html .
[5] Project Censored. Top 25 censored stories for 2009: #13: tracking billions of dollars lost in Iraq. http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/13-tracking-billions-of-dollars-lost-in-iraq/ , AP. Iraq corruption whistleblowers vilified. Aug. 25, 2007: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20430153/ , and Glanz, J. Premier of Iraq is quietly firing fraud monitors. Nov. 17, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/world/middleeast/18maliki.html .
[6] Follow the link to read pages 373-387 of Pettigrew’s Triumphant Plutocracy: http://reykr.livejournal.com/869777.html .
[7] Infowars. Watson, S. Government Dismissed Iraq Death Toll Report In Full Knowledge It Was Likely Accurate. March 27, 2007: http://www.infowars.net/articles/march2007/270307Iraq_toll.htm .
[8] See Bush press conference. YouTube. Bush Admits: “A lot of innocent people have died in Iraq.” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAlnMD2u5to .
[9] Antiwar homepage: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ .
[10] Gorilla’s Guides. Ibn Hussein, K. 5 Million Orphans. Dec. 15, 2007: http://gorillasguides.com/2007/12/15/5-million-orphans/ .
[11] Silent Victims of the Iraq War. June 20, 2008: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m45043&hd=&size=1&l=e .
[12] Displaced Iraqis Struggle for Food, Services: IOM. July 18, 2008: http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL1890387520080718 .
[13] Der Spiegel. Putz, U. Fleeing from Baghdad to Damascus: Refugees on the Highway from Hell. March 27, 2007: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,474205,00.html .
[14] Zoepf, K. Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade. May 29, 2007: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/world/middleeast/29syria.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 .
[15] Countercurrents.org. Ali, A., Jamail, D. Iraq: Unemployment too becomes an epidemic. Feb. 21, 2008: http://www.countercurrents.org/jamail210208.htm .
[16] Reuters. Ryan, M., Rahim, S. After 5 years of war, Iraqis desperate for water. Aug. 24, 2008: http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKLM554818._CH_.242020080824 .
[17] What Really Happened. Torture of Iraqi POWs. May 10, 2004: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/torture_pow.html , ABC News. Ross, B & Esposito, R. CIA’s Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described. Nov. 18, 2005: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=1322866 , Hersh, S. Torture at Abu Ghraib. New Yorker, May 10, 2004: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/05/10/040510fa_fact .
[18] Antiwar.com homepage: http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ .
[19] CBS News. Nov. 13, 2007: Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/cbsnews_investigates/main3496471.shtml
[20] BET.com. Suicides Clime Among US Soldiers. June 12, 2008: http://blogs.bet.com/news/newsyoushouldknow/suicides-climb-among-us-soldiers/ .
[21] Yahoo News. Euphrat, K. Suicide hot line got 22,000 calls from veterans. July 28, 2008: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/veteran_suicide .
[22] Wood, D. Suicides in Army Increase by 13%. June 27, 2008. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9466 .
[23] MSNBC. AP Report: June 30, 2004. 1 in 8 Returning Soldiers Suffers from PTSD: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5334479/ .
[24] Among many: KPFA 94.1. The War Comes Home. The Crisis in Veterans’ Health Care. Broadcast April 22, 2008: http://warcomeshome.org/crisis_in_health_care_broadcast , ZDNet. Blankenhorn, D. Is Congress Looking at the Right VA Scandal? April 24, 2008: http://healthcare.zdnet.com/?p=910 , and Hull, A & Priest D. It is Just not Walter Reed. March 5, 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030401394.html .
[25] Cockburn, P. It’s official: total defeat for U.S. in Iraq. Dec. 15, 2008. http://www.alternet.org/story/112768/
Comments
Carl,
Good assessment. What do you think about Afghanistan? Are we accomplishing anything there? Looks to me like we're going down the same futile path the Soviet Union went down.
Hi Mike,
Thanks :) Afghanistan is a War of Aggression. Check out the previous article "Wars of Aggression: Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran." The path isn't futile; these "leaders" are intelligent psychopaths (I mean that literally). The war justifies concentration of dictatorial power and takes hundreds of billions of dollars from us, from which the "leaders" skim about 25% for black projects. This was admitted by Secretary of Defense Runsfeld on September 10, 2001. Look up: Runsfeld $2.3 trillion missing, and you'll get his public press conference stating that the Pentagon's own accounting shows this theft. The answer that I recommend is Truth and Reconciliation to encourage those willing to have a "Scrooge conversion" and open a window for peaceful surrender. Those who refuse will be prosecuted.
Thanks for this article and for citing the work by Profs. Stiglitz and Bilmes, who have shed light on how we spent trillions for this war but neglected our own veterans here at home.
this is how all empires had collapsed throughout history. greed and hubris will do it's number on this empire also.
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