the $6 trillion war

Joseph Stiglitz may be a neo-classical economist but this is, without doubt, the most damning critique of the Iraq war. Despite the blatant lack of morality-based, security-based or diplomacy-based justifications for the Iraq war; neo-con war-pigs were still content to sit smugly in their exorbitantly indulgent petro-homes in texas and wax lyrical about the economic benefits of interventionism to the US economy. Stiglitz just fucked them over beautifully.


Predicting obvious criticisms from Republicans Stiglitz observed:

"They had two reactions," Stiglitz says wearily. "One was Bush saying, 'We don't go to war on the calculations of green eye-shaded accountants or economists.' And our response was, 'No, you don't decide to fight a response to Pearl Harbour on the basis of that, but when there's a war of choice, you at least use it to make sure your timing is right, that you've done the preparation. And you really ought to do the calculations to see if there are alternative ways that are more effective at getting your objectives. The second criticism - which we admit - was that we only look at the costs, not the benefits. Now, we couldn't see any [economic] benefits. From our point of view we weren't sure what those were."

(Emphasis is my own).

Pieces of information in this article are just so damning of Bush's rule. They are nothing short of incredible:

"By way of context, Stiglitz and Bilmes list what even one of these trillions could have paid for: 8 million housing units, or 15 million public school teachers, or healthcare for 530 million children for a year, or scholarships to university for 43 million students. Three trillion could have fixed America's social security problem for half a century. America, says Stiglitz, is currently spending $5bn a year in Africa, and worrying about being outflanked by China there: "Five billion is roughly 10 days' fighting, so you get a new metric of thinking about everything."

I ask what discoveries Stiglitz found the most disturbing. He laughs, somewhat mirthlessly. "There were actually so many things - some of it we suspected, but there were a few things I couldn't believe." The fact that a contractor working as a security guard gets about $400,000 a year, for example, as opposed to a soldier, who might get about $40,000. That there is a discrepancy we might have guessed - but not its sheer scale, or the fact that, because it is so hard to get insurance for working in Iraq, the government pays the premiums; or the fact that, if these contractors are injured or killed, the government pays both death and injury benefits on top. Understandably, this has forced a rise in sign-up bonuses (as has the fact that the army is so desperate for recruits that it is signing up convicted felons). "So we create a competition for ourselves. Nobody in their right mind would have done that. The Bush administration did that ... that I couldn't believe."

no comment required

See what I mean?

It came from this page.

Patrick Cockburn on Basra

He relates how the British armed forces have abjectly failed in their attempts to wrest control of Basra from the militias after the invasion. Its a pretty pathetic tale, the text of which should be tattooed onto Tony Blair's eyeballs so that he can't avoid its grim reality as long as his eyes are open. A luminescent ink would eliminate even that respite . . . . .

US fantasies

A passage from this article:

". . . the Americans maintained that withdrawing the [British] coalition presence from Basra, Iraq's second city, would pave the way for Iranian agents to move in. They claimed to have definite intelligence that elements of the al-Quds force were poised to infiltrate across the border from Iran when the British left. The British assessment did not support this scenario, holding that nationalism among the Shia population would supersede any affinity they felt with Shia Iran and that withdrawing from the palace would lessen violence."

Clearly the US weren't sharing their intelligence with the British forces. I think this is because their intelligence was bullshit and the British would have realised this and blown the whistle on their propaganda war against Iran.

Iraq

Interesting background to the insurgency and how small a part in it Al Qaeda play.

A fascinating book review from Znet. Anthony Arnove has written a text that lays out comprehensive arguments for a withdrawal from Iraq.

"The reality of the current and perhaps subsequent administrations is that any conjecture that relies “on the intelligence, rationality, or humanity of U.S. policymakers would be an unwise one.”"

Johann Hari also suggested a strategy for withdrawal which oozes common sense. It is the product of a US Senator called Geroge McGovern, a Vietnam Vet to boot.

"it begins with a simple apology from the US, Britain and other invaders for the catastrophe we have wrought – the opposite of Bush’s deranged demands for thanks. There must then be a commitment to dismantle all permanent US bases on Iraqi soil, and to allow the ownership of Iraqi oil by all Iraqi citizens – with the royalties divided equally between every Iraqi and paid out as a regular cheque, like they do in Alaska.

The US then needs to convene a regional conference, at which they pledge to pay full-whack for an international stabilization force to police Iraq, manned exclusively by Muslim countries like Morrocco, Tuinisia, Egypt, and Jordan. These countries will need all sorts of financial inducements to send troops. Tough. Pay them. McGovern calculates that even at top-rate, this would cost $5.5bn – just 3 percent of keeping the US forces there for the next two years. Once the police are fellow-Muslims, the often-murderous insurgents will be much more isolated. Al Qaeda’s tiny presence (estimated by US generals to be fewer than 500 fighters) will be even more despised. Only troops like this could have the legitimacy needed to stop a genocide."

this blogger predicts the collapse of the iraqi state within a year

Johann Hari says this:

"Almost every institution of the Iraqi state – the police, army, even the hospitals – are now bisected into Shia and Sunni wings who detest each other. What we are seeing in Iraq today is, in slower motion, what happened in India and Pakistan sixty years ago: the hellish ethnic cleansing of mixed areas, until everyone is trapped in homogenous blocks. There is a real and hefty risk that this will metastasize into an attempt to physically eliminate one of the groups. There is also a risk of the neighbouring countries invading, turning it into a Congo-on-the-Tigris, with the Saudis marching into defend the Sunnis, the Iranians invading to protect the Shia, and the Turks invading to prevent the creation of a mini-Kurdistan in the North.

But is this a case for keeping the US forces there? A recent, much-discussed-in-DC article in the New York Times by Brookings Institute scholars Michael O’Hanlan and Kenneth Pollack said so. They argued that ‘the surge’ of 21,000 troops into Iraq is finally working, and creating momentum away from sectarian violence.

If this was true, it would be important - but their own Institute’s figures show it is the opposite of the truth. It makes no sense to compare statistics on violence in Iraq month-to-month, because the violence fluctuates seasonally (as it does in most cities in the world). For reliable figures, you have to compare this July to last July. And what do you find in Brookings’ statistics? Iraqi military and police killed are up 23 percent. The number of people killed in multiple fatality bombings is up 19 percent. US troop fatalities are up 80 percent. The size of the insurgency is up 250 percent. Attacks on oil and gas pipelines are up 75 percent. The refugee outflow has doubled. Hours of electricity available per day are down 14 percent. Far from creating the space for political compromise among Iraqis, the Sunnis and secularists have marched angrily out of the Maliki government."

I reckon there's not long to go now. The US won't pull troops out whilst Bush is in power. For any reason, no matter how perversely motivated by their domestic political agenda and sheer selfishness. So the state will wobble on and on until some massive suicide bomb makes into the parliament and kills half the MPs and the state simply collapses. Then we have genocide whilst US soldiers stand by, not caring because fewer people are shooting at them now.

a fine piece of Bush slagging

Have it, you filthy cristo-fascist cunt.

Vietnam mark II - anyone remember My Lai?

Well, this is 50 times worse.

The Guardian gets busted regurgitating Pentagon Propaganda

Media Lens have done a thorough takedown on this Guardian front page spread by some goon called Simon Tisdall, slating it for its uncritical regurgitation of an unnamed US official's words. I would like to say that this is uncharacteristic of The Guardian but I really wouldn't know, not being a Professor of Journalism or anything.

Its simulaneously encouraging and alarming when shit like this makes its way into my world as at one stroke I am greatly pleased to see someone monitoring the abuse of the press whilst at the same time being terrified that media outlets that I regularly read might be functioning as outlets of evill. I didn't encounter this article personally but if I did I can assure you that I would have been one of the many people who wrote to the Guardian Editor in horror at this sort of uncritical reporting making its way onto the front page of this paper.

This comment from a CiF thread was particularly frank:

"What the original article conspicuously avoids, and what this miserable excuse for a justification also ignores, is that there is without any doubt a propaganda campaign from the United States regime to justify a military attack on Iran, an attack which the US has repeatedly threatened despite its overt criminality. In that context, a journalist who willingly fires the propaganda missiles of the aggressive US regime is worse than just servile, they will actually share some of the guilt of the crime if the aggression against Iran does eventuate."

its a telling moment when soldiers break their silence

So several soldiers, fresh from Iraq, have been breaking their traditional silence over defence policy and have started speaking out against their presence in Iraq. I think this quote sums it up nicely:

"Every patrol we went on we were either shot at or blown up by roadside bombs. It was crazy. . . . . . . .We have overstayed our welcome now. We should speed up the withdrawal. It's a lost battle. We should pull out and call it quits."

Did you get that Tony? If you are, in fact, human and not a lying machine as you appear so convincingly to be, would you now consider bringing these poorly paid, under equipped, unfortunates home?

Scary told you so - no evidence for Iranian complicity in Iraq

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Fucking right I did.

Even if there are Iranians in Iraq- so fucking what? There are Arabs of every nationality as well as a large number of Americans involved in committing attrocities in Iraq. If evidence existed that the Iranian government was involved so fucking what again? The US and UK governments have engaged in the genocide of hundreds of thousands of innocents and have no grounds for complaint. This is what happens when you engage in an illegal war. You have no right to whinge when previous victims of your injust policies seize the opportunity to deal out a few rightly deserved kidney punches when your people are looking the other way.

Another article in the Guardian details how the US and UK have together engineered Iran's supremacy in the middle East:

"The uncomfortable paradox facing London and Washington as they try to put the Iranian genie back in its bottle is that they have done more than anyone to uncork that bottle in the first place and set Iran on the way to regional hegemony.

First they removed the Taliban, Iran's enemy to the east, and then they eliminated Saddam Hussein. In little more than a year, the allies ensured Iran achieved its key strategic objective: to become the dominant power in the Gulf and the Middle East."

Lets face it, of the three I think we're better off with the Iranians coming out on top than the Taliban or Saddam. At least the Iranians are a balance between the outright religious nutcases of the Taliban and the endemically corrupt and totalitarian personality cult of Saddam's Iraq. Iranian culture is- in many ways- far more progressive than the other two (although still appalling brutal in other ways but next to the Taliban and Saddam's secret police I know who I'd rather be imprisoned by).

Bush's legacy

I laughed!

Noam Chomsky on Iran, Iraq and the rest of the world

Some fascinating insights here from Prof Chomsky.

"That’s the immediate consequence of constant threats. Everyone knows that. That’s one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the U.S. threats, that it’s undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that’s presumably its purpose. Since it’s an obvious consequence you have to assume it’s the purpose. Just like in law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for intention. And here’s it so obvious you can’t seriously doubt it."

"The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn’t have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they don’t report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn’t exist, but they don’t like it when Khamenei right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I’m aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei’s more conciliatory positions in the Financial Times, but not here. And it’s repeated by Iranian diplomats but that’s no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for thirty years. And that’s not a good story, so it’s either not mentioned or it’s hidden somewhere.

It’s very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they’re deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now they’re desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should’ve been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can’t control it and it’s almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can’t discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can’t get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

We’re supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would’ve liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can’t be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi’ite-dominated, at least if it’s minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn’t want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi’ite population, probably a majority.

Neocons of all nationalities continue to attempt to justify the Iraq genocide

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I am having a good old ding-dong with my arch-nemesies over at Little Green Soccer Balls. I am SDM (SonicDeathMonkey).

For some reason they won't let you post with the word "monkey" in your name. Some irrational fear of primates methinks, eg. other human beings. This is clearly evident from their utter lack of any human values.

massive holes in Bush's 'evidence' of Iranian complicity in Iraqi resistance

http://arabisto.com/p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=352

Interesting site. I will read more.

Addition

Good analysis of the US's policy of accusing Iran of "supporting" terrorism.

"What is interesting about the framework for discussion of Iranian support for attacks on US troops in Iraq is the underlying assumption that it would be most heinous for Iran to involve itself with its next-door neighbor. The US, on the other hand, has every right to interfere, politically and militarily, in the affairs of the Mesopotamian country on the other side of the world. This declared right for the US to use violence to meet political ends (which, incidentally, meets the definition of terrorism) is never questioned in Washington or the corporate media, while the conjecture about Iranian involvement in Iraq rages on. An alternative framework for discussion is possible. It could be assumed that the same standards must apply to the US as to Iran. But that would be unthinkable. The US is instead absurdly portrayed as the defender of Iraq, struggling to keep other parties from destabilizing the country. Iraq is preposterously “the front line” in the “war on terrorism” as a result of waging a “war on terrorism” against Iraq."

The use of ground attack aircraft in guerilla warfare is wildly counterproductive

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I was reading this article on CiF and recalling reading my father's memoirs about his experiences flying Harrier GR1s in the Falklands War. In particular I was considering the enormous gap in civilisation between deploying such multi-million killing pound technology against a well armed, trained and equipped foe such as the Argentinian junta and deploying such technology against guerilla fighters such as the majority of those targetted in Iraq. Although I cannot deny that there do exist well trained and equipped fighters in that country they are the minute minority and the overwhelming majority of targets are young men with little or no tactical warfare training, armed with small arms and nothing more. The deployment of the most advanced ground attack aircraft on the planet against such targets is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut and, as the article describes, grossly counterproductive to the intended achievement of a peaceful solution to the conflict.

The most disturbing aspect of this article is the fact that the British forces in Afghanistan appear to have adopted similar tactics in their fight against the Pashtun-Taliban militias. Although I find it distressing to hear reports of American forces deploying military force to gross excesses, the reports of the RAF following suit is, frankly, shocking. I appear to have been labouring under the misapprehension that our forces were trained to fight with honour. Aparrently I have been mislead. When such regressive tactics are deployed it is little wonder that the resistance simply strengthen their resolve to continue the fight against these imperialist invaders with the super-advanced technology and their well equipped soldiers.

It can only be concluded that the people ordering the use of such tactics do not want to end the conflict, but are in fact bent upon aggravating and prolonging it.