We fight, you pay: Costs of the Iraq
war By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
Unless you own a lot of stock in Halliburton or other
big defense, security or construction companies, chances
are the Iraq war has turned out to be a pretty bad
investment, both in terms of human lives and taxpayer
dollars, according to a new assessment by a
Washington-based think-tank, the Institute for Policy
Studies (IPS).
In what it claims is the first
comprehensive accounting of the costs of the war on the
US, Iraq, and much of the rest of the world, IPS
concludes that not only have US taxpayers paid a "very
high price for the war", they have also become "less
secure at home and in the world".
Citing a
number of recent studies, the report, "Paying the Price:
The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War", also notes that the
US$151.1 billion that will have been spent through this
fiscal year could have paid for comprehensive health
care for 82 million US children or the salaries of
nearly 3 million elementary school teachers. According
to one study cited in the 54-page report, the war and
occupation will cost the average US household at least
$3,415 through the end of this year.
If spent on
international programs, the same sum could have cut
world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine,
childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation
needs of all developing countries for more than two
years.
The report's release comes just a week
before the planned handover by the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA) of Iraq's "sovereignty" to the interim
government, although its authors stress that the new
Iraqi authorities will exercise only very limited
authority given the continuing presence and autonomy of
more than 160,000 US and foreign troops under US
military command and their inability to rescind nearly
100 orders decreed by the CPA chief, L Paul Bremer.
It also comes amid a number of other negative
assessments, including by Bremer himself, as well as by
a series of public-opinion surveys in Iraq about the
occupation's achievements, both for the US and Iraqis.
According to one mid-May poll that was
commissioned for the CPA, more than 80% of Iraqis say
they have no confidence in the occupation authorities,
and 55% said they would feel safer if coalition forces
left the country.
While the financial costs of
the war are enormous, according to the report, the costs
in blood, both for US citizens and Iraqis, are by no
means insignificant. More than 850 US troops have been
killed since the start of the war on March 19 last year,
just over 700 of them since US President George W Bush
declared the end of major hostilities on May 1, 2003,
making the post-combat phase of the war by far the
bloodiest US engagement since the Indochina conflict in
the 1960s and early 1970s.
In addition, more
than 5,134 troops were wounded through June 16 - 4,593
of them since the official end of combat. Nearly
two-thirds of the wounded, according to the report,
received injuries serious enough to prevent them from
returning to duty.
But despite precision bombing
and other weapons and tactics designed to reduce
"collateral damage", the toll among Iraqis has been far
more dramatic, according to the report, whose principal
author was Phyllis Bennis, IPS' main Middle East
analyst.
As of June 16, it estimates that
between 9,436 and 11,317 civilians have been killed as a
direct result of the US invasion and ensuing occupation,
while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. In
addition, during "major combat" operations both during
the invasion and after May 1, 2003, the report estimates
that between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and
insurgents had been killed as of mid-June.
Moreover, these figures do not take account of
the long-run health impacts of the estimated 1,100 to
2,200 tonnes of ordnance made from depleted uranium,
which many scientists blamed for illnesses among US
soldiers in the first Gulf War in 1991 and a seven-fold
increase in child birth defects in southern Iraq since
1991, that were expended during the March 2003 bombing
campaign.
Nor do they account for the
psychological impact of both the war and the
skyrocketing violence, including murders, rapes and
kidnapping, that followed the invasion and that now
keeps many Iraqi children from attending school and
requires many women to stay off the streets at night.
Violent deaths, according to the report, rose from an
average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in
2003.
Despite promises by the CPA to rebuild and
expand Iraq's infrastructure, the country is still not
producing as much electricity or as much oil on a
sustained basis as it was just before the war, according
to the report. Its authors blame a combination of
sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering
by big US companies like Halliburton that captured
virtually all of the reconstruction contracts, despite
the much greater experience of Iraqi firms.
Due
to security concerns, school attendance is reportedly
running below pre-war levels, while Iraq's hospitals and
health systems have been overwhelmed by a combination of
lack of supplies and unprecedented demand created by the
ongoing violence.
"We have played a large part
in destroying this country," said Bennis, who recalled
the first Gulf War and the 13 years of US-backed United
Nations sanctions that had already weakened much of
Iraq's infrastructure before the war.
Washington's invasion and occupation have also
exacted other costs for which the US may have to pay for
a very long time, according to the report, which cited a
recent assessment by the conservative International
Institute for Strategic Studies that the Iraq war has
greatly increased recruitment by al-Qaeda and similar
radical groups. The London-based think-tank estimated
al-Qaeda's membership at 18,000, with 1,000 active in
Iraq..
That assessment also echoes the
conclusion of a new book by a top active-duty Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer to be released next
week that "there is nothing that [al-Qaeda chief Osama)
bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American
invasion and occupation of Iraq". The author, Anonymous,
until recently headed the CIA's efforts to track down
bin Laden and is considered an expert on al-Qaeda.
Washington has also dealt a serious blow to its
own standing and credibility in the larger world, as
well as in Arab and Islamic nations, according to the
report, which cites recent surveys of public opinion in
more than two dozen countries, including its closest
European allies; the weakening of the United Nations and
international law resulting from both the precedent
created by going to war unilaterally and in the inhumane
treatment of detainees in both Afghanistan and Iraq; and
the alienation of the Iraqi public.
"Rather than
winning hearts, US actions have destroyed lives," said
Anas Shallal, an Iraqi-American who founded the
Mesopotamia Cultural Society and contributed to the
report.
