Tag Archives: iraq war

| Dear Tony Blair, thanks for everything, hope you enjoy the oil, Love – Iraq!

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Dear Tony Blair, thanks for everything, hope you enjoy the oil, Love – Iraq ~ Stop the War Coalition, The Mirror.

We hear sad rumours that you are still criticised for the Iraq War , the dodgy dossier, and making such a mess of the Middle East that you’d be better described as a God of War than a peace envoy.

Tony Blair and Iraq chaos

Dear Tony Blair,

Hi. How are things? How’s life treating you?

You haven’t been in touch lately so we thought we’d sit down and write you a letter about how life’s treating us.

We understand in Britain that one prisoner absconds from jail every 43 hours. That must be scary.

Here in Mosul, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant have just bust open the main jail and let everyone out at once.

There’s about 2,000 of them, and they were mainly in there for terrorism.

We hear that in your work as an international statesman and diplomat, with a profile burnished by pro bono work as a Middle East special envoy, you earn about £20million a year.

Wow! That’s a lot.

Here, ISIL have just made £237million in about five minutes by robbing the banks in our second city.

And they were already on £600,000 a month via extortion and blackmail.

According to your website you’ve got about six jobs, Google says you own seven or eight houses and you privately jet about the world a lot visiting media moguls, their wives, their ranches and their yachts.

Here we have 16% unemployment, 25% of us live under the poverty line , and the electricity hardly ever works because 90% of our power systems were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War and what’s left has been sabotaged by insurgents.

We understand your eldest son recently married. Congratulations! Perhaps soon you will become a grandfather.

22% of Iraqi children born between 2008 and 2012 were medically “stunted”, according to UNICEF.

24% of children are married before they’re 18.

Oh, and one in 310 mothers will die in childbirth.

We agree with you that Saddam Hussein was “a profoundly wicked, I would say almost psychopathic man”.

He used chemical weapons against us, there were secret police, torture and mass executions. Brrr. Thank goodness we’re rid of him.

In the years since you deposed him , the Iraqi authorities elected after your war have carried out hundreds of secret executions and there have been 20 times the number of birth defects among our children which are attributed to depleted uranium in your weapons.

In the past few days there have been mass beheadings by ISIL. Life is so much better now.

Apparently a man called Sir John Chilcot was going to publish some letters you wrote, and now he’s decided he won’t.

That must be very worrying for you.

Here in Iraq, 23% of people cannot write letters at all because they’re illiterate. 22% have never been to school.

In some areas, 47% of women are illiterate.

But hey, at least Mr Chilcot can’t publish what they tell people!

Apparently 179 British soldiers – and one journalist, along with a French cameraman – died during the 2003 war.

We are sure this weighs on your conscience, all those lives. Awful.

The number of Iraqi deaths is guesstimated at 188,000 so far.

We’ve seen reports that the British taxpayer spends £250,000 a year on your security in case disgruntled Iraqis try to blow you up.

Tell Scotland Yard to save their money – we’re too poor, illiterate, exhausted, sick and under threat from extremists to come over there and hurt you!

We hear sad rumours that you are still criticised for the Iraq War , the dodgy dossier, and making such a mess of the Middle East that you’d be better described as a God of War than a peace envoy.

Just because you intervened in a Sunni-Shia row that’s been raging since the 7th century, removed the one unifying force in a nation of about six different ethnic groups, made a complete hash of the occupation which radicalised thousands and pulled out leaving us the 7th most corrupt nation in the world is no reason to beat yourself up.

Saddam and his boys were utterly monstrous, and thanks to your £1.1trillion war we now have a bunch of new and interesting monsters to deal with.

We’d love to introduce you to them if you ever come over this way.

Hope you like the oil, and thanks for all the fundamentalists!

Love,

Iraq

Source: The Mirror

 

| 6 things about Mandela the mainstream media whitewashes!

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Six Things Nelson Mandela Believed That Most People Won’t Talk About ~ AVIVA SHEN and  JUDD LEGUM, ThinkProgress.

In the desire to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life — an iconic figure who triumphed over South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime — it’s tempting to homogenize his views into something everyone can support. This is not, however, an accurate representation of the man.

Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator put itshortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, “Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.”

As the world remembers Mandela, here are some of the things he believed that many will gloss over.

1. Mandela blasted the Iraq War and American imperialism. Mandela called Bush “a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly,” and accused him of “wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust” by going to war in Iraq. “All that (Mr. Bush) wants is Iraqi oil,” he said. Mandela even speculated that then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan was being undermined in the process because he was black. “They never did that when secretary-generals were white,” he said. He saw the Iraq War as a greater problem of American imperialism around the world. “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care,” he said.

2. Mandela called freedom from poverty a “fundamental human right.” Mandela considered poverty one of the greatest evils in the world, and spoke out against inequality everywhere. “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils,” he said. He considered ending poverty a basic human duty: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life,” he said. “While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”

3. Mandela criticized the “War on Terror” and the labeling of individuals as terrorists without due process. On the U.S. terrorist watch list until 2008 himself, Mandela was an outspoken critic of President George W. Bush’s war on terror. He warned against rushing to label terrorists without due process. While forcefully calling for Osama bin Laden to be brought to justice, Mandela remarked, “The labeling of Osama bin Laden as the terrorist responsible for those acts before he had been tried and convicted could also be seen as undermining some of the basic tenets of the rule of law.”

4. Mandela called out racism in America. On a trip to New York City in 1990, Mandela made a point of visiting Harlem and praising African Americans’ struggles against “the injustices of racist discrimination and economic equality.” He reminded a larger crowd at Yankee Stadium that racism was not exclusively a South African phenomenon. “As we enter the last decade of the 20th century, it is intolerable, unacceptable, that the cancer of racism is still eating away at the fabric of societies in different parts of our planet,” he said. “All of us, black and white, should spare no effort in our struggle against all forms and manifestations of racism, wherever and whenever it rears its ugly head.”

5. Mandela embraced some of America’s biggest political enemies. Mandela incited shock and anger in many American communities for refusing to denounce Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who had lent their support to Mandela against South African apartheid. “One of the mistakes the Western world makes is to think that their enemies should be our enemies,” he explained to an American TV audience. “We have our own struggle.” He added that those leaders “are placing resources at our disposal to win the struggle.” He also called the controversial Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat “a comrade in arms.”

6. Mandela was a die-hard supporter of labor unions. Mandela visited the Detroit auto workers union when touring the U.S., immediately claiming kinship with them. “Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, the man who is speaking is not a stranger here,” he said. “The man who is speaking is a member of the UAW. I am your flesh and blood.”

Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela

CREDIT: AP

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| Tony Blair: never in the field of human history has one man earned so much from deaths of so many!

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Tony Blair: never in the field of human history has one man earned so much from deaths of so many ~ Matt Carr, Stop the War Coalition, Matt Carr’s Infernal Machine.

Just as we learned that the US and UK governments were conspiring to stop us learning the truth of the Bush-Blair Iraq consiracy, Tony Blair picked up £150,000 for an hour-long speech in Dubai!

Blair war crimes

In the last fortnight a number of media commentators accused Russell Brand of naivete and political ignorance for his criticisms of the democratic system and the limitations of the right to vote.

This week however, the British public were presented with further evidence of how hollowed-out the democratic process has become, when the Chilcot Inquiry revealed that it was being denied access to 25 notes sent by Tony Blair to George Bush, and 130 documents relating to conversations between the two architects of the Iraq War, in addition to dozens of records of cabinet meetings.

There is no more serious decision that a government can take than a declaration of war, and there is no more serious test of a democracy than the ability to hold its leaders to account over why and how such decisions are taken, especially when a war is declared on false pretenses and results in a tragic and bloody disaster of the magnitude of the Iraq War.

The Chilcot Inquiry was established by Gordon Brown with the fairly mild remit to establish ‘lessons’ from the Iraq war, rather than ‘apportion blame.’ Much to its own surprise no doubt, it has shown more teeth than anyone expected, to the point when its investigations threaten the reputations – and the cash flow – of those responsible.

Today these noble statesmen have moved on. Bush now paints pictures of dogs and puppies, and makes donations to an organization that seeks to convert Jews into Christians. When he talks about Iraq at all it’s only to say that like Edith Piaf and Dick Cheney, he doesn’t regret anything.

Nor does his partner-in-crime, the Right Honorable Tony Blair, Peace Envoy and all-round money-making machine, who just gets richer and richer, and continues to urge on new wars with the same combination of bug-eyed fanaticism, pig ignorance and deference that once produced such sterling results in Iraq.

This week he picked up £150,000 for an hour-long speech in Dubai, whose subject, apparently, was something called ‘global affairs’. To paraphrase Churchill, never in the field of human history has one man earned so much from the deaths of so many.

And people are still dying in the broken country and interminable battlefield that Iraq has become. Yesterday, 67 Shi’ite pilgrims were killed and 152 more wounded in sectarian attacks on the Ashura celebrations in Karbala.

This year, more than 6,000 people have died in Iraq – exactly ten years after it was ‘liberated’ and its society effectively destroyed by the madcap free market experiment, the incredibly botched occupation, the lies and manipulations, the death squads, the suicide bombers and all the other disastrous consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

That matters, and should matter most of all in the countries that made it happen. Yet now we find that the inquiry established to ‘learn lessons’ from the war will not be able to know what the two men most responsible for this bloody debacle were saying to each other, or what Blair was saying – or not saying – to his cabinet.

If a democratic society cannot establish mechanisms to hold its elected officials to account over a war that amounts to one of the greatest foreign policy disasters in British history – a war that according to the Nuremberg process amounts to a war of aggression and the ‘supreme crime’ then it is not serious.

If such a society allows those responsible to cloak themselves in secrecy on spurious grounds of reasons of state that are designed to protect them from scrutiny – then such a democracy is essentially a simulacrum, an elite-managed spectacle, a Darren Brown magic trick that provides the illusion, but not the substance of public participation in the political process.

It means that democracy is a kind of theatre, in which the public is allowed to play a limited role, like the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or Strictly Come Dancing, and press a buzzer for this party or that party, but it cannot be privy to the backrooms where politicians and civil servants take decisions without consultation and without explanation.

That is why it matters that the US State Department and Whitehall are conniving to keep Bush and Blair’s machinations under wraps. One of the key individuals who is blocking the Chilcot Inquiry’s access to key documents is Sir Jeremy Heywood, the UK’s most senior civil servant, formerly private secretary to Tony Blair during the lead-up to the Iraq War.

To expect such a man to behave otherwise is a bit like expecting MacBeth to hold a public inquiry into the murder of King Duncan.

But Heywood should not be allowed to get away with it, and nor should the Coalition, which is also complicit in this cover-up. All of them clearly hope that Chilcot will just go ahead without these documents and produce some polite and-all-very British pseudo-criticism that Blair can agree to and no one will pay any attention to.

Then everyone will agree that lessons have been ‘learned’, when we won’t have learned anything at all. We shouldn’t let this happen. Because it isn’t just about them and it isn’t just about Iraq. It’s also about us.

Because if a government can get away with this, it can get away with anything.

Source: Matt Carr’s Infernal Machine

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ON SELF-SERVING TONY B’LIAR + BLOOD-MONEY tr_newlogo-blogbg

Regarding the muppet called Tony Blair, 
Remember he had all Iraq bombed from the air. 
Then with great decorum, 
He set up a multi-faith forum, 
So now is a smug millionaire!

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| David Cameron blocks report that exposes Tony Blair’s Iraq war crimes!

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David Cameron blocks report that exposes Tony Blair’s Iraq war crimes ~ Lindsey German, Stop the War Coalition.

David Cameron is blocking publication of the Iraq Inquiry report because it confirms a secret conspiracy by Bush and Blair to take the US and Britain into an illegal war. 

While David Cameron was laying wreaths of poppies at the Cenotaph this weekend, to remember the past war dead, he has been blocking an inquiry set up to tell the truth about the war in Iraq.

That is the meaning of the refusal of the Cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to release records of conversations between then prime minister and US president George Bush, in the run up to the war on Iraq.

Blair lied thousands diedDemonstration at Iraq Inquiry on 29January 2010 when Tony Blair gave evidence.

These records have been demanded repeatedly by the Chilcot inquiry, set up when Gordon Brown was prime minister, back in 2009. Chilcot said then that his inquiry would take a year and a half, or maybe a bit longer. That would have seen it report over two years ago. But now its publication date has been pushed back into 2014 at least.

While many people were always sceptical that Chilcot’s team, handpicked from the British establishment, would land a mortal blow on the former prime minister who now poses as envoy for peace in the Middle East, at the same time no one expected the report to take so long. The hold up will be because the aforementioned Tony Blair wants it to be held up, and he would not be able to do so without the collusion of Cameron.

So whereas the Chilcot Inquiry was set up supposedly to investigate what went wrong in the run up to war in Iraq, the very people responsible for what went wrong are blocking its publication. Tony Blair remains at large urging us on to further wars, most recently in Syria.

In the meantime, records of an estimated 130 conversations between Blair and Bush and then Brown and Bush are being blocked by this top civil servant. In addition there are 25 notes from Blair to Bush and 200 cabinet level discussions also being withheld. This adds up to a lot of conversations, the majority probably damaging to Bush and Blair.

There is a lot at stake here, because Chilcot is trying to get at the precise point at which Blair agreed to go to war alongside Bush over Iraq.

If, as many of us suspect, this deal was made early in 2002, a full year before the invasion actually took place, it would show a conspiracy to go to war which not only ignored its legality or otherwise, but also a wilful series of deceits carried out by Blair and his allies.

The whole charade of government actions in the months before the war would be shown to be just that: the 45 minutes dossier, the distortion of intelligence findings, the demands for a second UN resolution, the blaming of the French for scuppering such a resolution, the pretence of wanting peace if Saddam Hussein would give up his (non existent)weapons of mass destruction.

All these were just so much spin and softening up, trying to get the public and MPs to agree to a war which had already been decided on, and which was clearly about regime change.

Blair’s tactic now is to delay as long as possible in the hope that time will soften opinion against him, and that he will be able to continue in a highly political role. Compare Blair’s role in international politics to that of any previous modern British prime minister to see how centrally, lucratively, and damagingly, involved he still is. A hostile Chilcot report would make it impossible for him to continue that role, and would open up the long overdue possibility of his facing war crimes proceedings.

As government ministers huff and puff about whistleblowers’ revelations about state surveillance, we should remember that they have a lot to hide. All discussions between the main protagonists in taking us to war in Iraq should be made public so we can judge for ourselves who was at fault. There is no justifiable reason for secrecy except to save the faces of those involved, and to allow them to remain rich, powerful and protected.

We owe it to the millions who suffered from the Iraq war and to the millions who demonstrated against it, to ensure that the truth comes out.

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|Breaking the bank: US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq to cost $6 trillion!

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US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq to cost $6 trillion ~ Sabir Shah, The News International.

 

LAHORE: The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

 

Remember, when President George Bush’s National Economic Council Director, Lawrence Lindsey, had told the country’s largest newspaper “The Wall Street Journal” that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion, he had found himself under intense fire from his colleagues in the administration who claimed that this was a gross overestimation.

 

Consequently, Lawrence Lindsey was forced to resign.It is also imperative to recall that the Bush administration had claimed at the very outset that the Iraq war would finance itself out of Iraqi oil revenues, but Washington DC had instead ended up borrowing some $2 trillion to finance the two wars, the bulk of it from foreign lenders.

 

According to the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government 2013 report, this accounted for roughly 20 per cent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012.

 

According to the report, the US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” andfuture interest payments would amount to trillions of dollars.This Harvard University report has also been carried on its website by the Centre for Research on Globalisation, which is a widely-quoted Montreal-based independent research and media organisation.

 

In its report under review, the 377-year old Harvard University has viewed that these afore-mentioned wars had not only left the United States heavily indebted, but would also have a profound impact on the federal government’s fiscal and budgetary crises over a protracted period.

 

The report has attributed the largest share of the trillions of dollars in continuing costs to care and compensation for hundreds of thousands of troops left physically and psychologically damaged by the two wars being discussed here.

 

The report states: “The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history—totaling somewhere between $4 trillion and $6 trillion. This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid.”

 

It asserts: “Another major share of the long-term costs of the wars comes from paying off trillions of dollars in debt incurred as the US government failed to include their cost in annual budgets and simultaneously implemented sweeping tax cuts for the rich. In addition, huge expenditures are being made to replace military equipment used in the two wars. The report also cites improvements in military pay and benefits made in 2004 to counter declining recruitment rates as casualties rose in the Iraq war.”

 

The authors of this report have warned that the legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.

 

According to the Harvard University report, some 1.56 million US troops—56 per cent of all Afghanistan and Iraq veterans—were receiving medical treatment at Veterans Administration facilities and would be granted benefits for the rest of their lives.

 

It reveals: “One out of every two veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan has already applied for permanent disability benefits. The official figure of 50,000 American troops “wounded in action” vastly underestimates the real human costs of the two US wars. One-third of returning veterans are being diagnosed with mental health issues—suffering from anxiety, depression, and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”

 

The report notes that in addition, over a quarter of a million troops have suffered traumatic brain injuries (TBI), which, in many cases, were combined with PTSD, posing greater problems in treatment and recovery.

 

“Constituting a particularly grim facet of this mental health crisis is the doubling of the suicide rate for US Army personnel, with many who attempted suicide suffering serious injuries,” opine the report authors.

 

It maintains: “Overall, the Veterans Administration’s budget has more than doubled over the past decade, from $61.4 billion in 2001 to $140.3 billion in 2013. As a share of the total US budget it has grown from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent over the same period. Soaring medical costs for veterans is attributable to several factors. Among them is that, thanks to advancements in medical technology and rapid treatment, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived wounds that would have cost their lives in earlier conflicts.”

 

The Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government report has estimated: “While the US government has already spent $134 billion on medical care and disability benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, this figure will climb by an additional $836 billion over the coming decades.”

 

It notes that the largest expenditures on health care for World War II veterans took place in the 1980s, roughly four decades after the war, and that spending on medical care and disability payments for Vietnam War veterans was still on the rise.

 

Here follows the description: “The most common medical problems suffered by troops returning from the two wars include: diseases of the musculoskeletal system (principally joint and back disorders); mental health disorders; central nervous system and endocrine system disorders; as well as respiratory, digestive, skin and hearing disorders. Overall, some 29 per cent of these troops have been diagnosed with PTSD.”

 

The report goes on to argue: “Among the most severely wounded are 6,476 soldiers and Marines who have suffered “severe penetrating brain injury,” and another 1,715 who have had one or more limbs amputated. Over 30,000 veterans are listed as suffering 100 percent service-related disabilities, while another 145,000 are listed as 70 to 90 percent disabled.”

 

It reads: “The worst of these casualties have taken place under the Obama administration as a result of the so-called surge that the Democratic president ordered in Afghanistan.”

 

It mentions that the Walter Reed Medical Centre, US Army’s flagship hospital at Washington DC, was treating hundreds of recent amputees and severe casualties, adding that this facility had received 100 amputees for treatment during 2010; 170 amputees in 2011; and 107 amputees in 2012.

 

The report has also stated that the US Marines have suffered an especially high toll.

 

The report points out: “Massive direct spending on the two imperialist interventions continues. With over 60,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan, it is estimated that the cost of deploying one American soldier for one year in this war amounts to $1 million. These troops continue suffering casualties—including in so-called “green on blue” attacks by Afghan security forces on their ostensible allies. As they are brought home, they will further drive up the costs of medical care and disability compensation. The US is maintaining a vast diplomatic presence in Iraq, including at least 10,000 private contractors providing support in security, IT, logistics, engineering and other occupations; as well as logistics support and payments for leased facilities in Kuwait.”

 

In its conclusion, the report not only seeks to dispel illusions that ending full-scale wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would produce any kind of “peace dividend” that could help ameliorate conditions of poverty, unemployment and declining living standards for working people in the US itself, but makes it clear that the legacy of decisions made during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts would impose significant long-term costs on the federal government for many years to come.

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BrainwashMethod

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| Obama Warned on Syrian Intel ~ Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

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Obama Warned on Intel about Syrian ~ Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), Consortium News.

Exclusive: Despite the Obama administration’s supposedly “high confidence” regarding Syrian government guilt over the Aug. 21 chemical attack near Damascus, a dozen former U.S. military and intelligence officials are telling President Obama that they are picking up information that undercuts the Official Story.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.

Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?

That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”

This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”

Déjà Fraud: This brings a flashback to the famous Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002, on Iraq, The minutes record the Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that President Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein through military action that would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Dearlove had gotten the word from then-CIA Director George Tenet whom he visited at CIA headquarters on July 20.

The discussion that followed centered on the ephemeral nature of the evidence, prompting Dearlove to explain: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We are concerned that this is precisely what has happened with the “intelligence” on Syria.

The Intelligence

There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.

According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.

We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.

In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.

Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.

At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government

The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.

Cui bono?

That the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort is clear. Until now, it has not been quite as clear that the Netanyahu government in Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area. But with outspoken urging coming from Israel and those Americans who lobby for Israeli interests, this priority Israeli objective is becoming crystal clear.

Reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem in an important article in Friday’s New York Times addresses Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, titled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. Rudoren continues:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

We think this is the way Israel’s current leaders look at the situation in Syria, and that deeper U.S. involvement – albeit, initially, by “limited” military strikes – is likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict in Syria. The longer Sunni and Shia are at each other’s throats in Syria and in the wider region, the safer Israel calculates that it is.

That Syria’s main ally is Iran, with whom it has a mutual defense treaty, also plays a role in Israeli calculations. Iran’s leaders are not likely to be able to have much military impact in Syria, and Israel can highlight that as an embarrassment for Tehran.

Iran’s Role

Iran can readily be blamed by association and charged with all manner of provocation, real and imagined. Some have seen Israel’s hand in the provenance of the most damaging charges against Assad regarding chemical weapons and our experience suggests to us that such is supremely possible.

Possible also is a false-flag attack by an interested party resulting in the sinking or damaging, say, of one of the five U.S. destroyers now on patrol just west of Syria. Our mainstream media could be counted on to milk that for all it’s worth, and you would find yourself under still more pressure to widen U.S. military involvement in Syria – and perhaps beyond, against Iran.

Iran has joined those who blame the Syrian rebels for the August 21 chemical incident, and has been quick to warn the U.S. not to get more deeply involved. According to the Iranian English-channel Press TV, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif has claimed: “The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for [the United States].”

Actually, he may be not far off the mark. But we think your advisers may be chary of entertaining this notion. Thus, we see as our continuing responsibility to try to get word to you so as to ensure that you and other decision makers are given the full picture.

Inevitable Retaliation

We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan

Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

W. Patrick Lang, Senior Executive and Defense Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)

Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.)

Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), formed in January 2003 “to speak out on the use of intelligence to justify the war,” is “a coast-to-coast enterprise; mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA, but Operations side also represented.
*Read other articles by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

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| Peace: Act now – we can make a difference!

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Act now – we can make a difference ~ Kevin Ovenden, Stop the War Coalition.

Stop the War Coalition national officer Kevin Ovenden looks at the arguments about whether protest makes a difference – and what we need to do now.

Protest against on attack on SyriaA Stop the War Coalition protest at Downing St against any attack on Syria, 28 August 2013.

It may seem wearily familiar – a rush to war, disputed intelligence dossiers and a determined effort to proceed without even UN Security Council authorisation.

 

There are echoes of Iraq ten years ago, and it casts a long shadow upon the mounting political crisis over moves to bomb Syria.

But we should not be weary or resigned. The combination of domestic weakness and declining authority in the Middle East (both consequences of the Iraq disaster) means that we are at a moment when what we as a movement do can have a major impact.

The compelling arguments against war on Syria are well made on the Stop the War site and are finding their way into the media and wider public discussion, not only from anti-war journalists and sympathetic public figures.

Still, for many, especially those hundreds of thousands of us who marched against the Iraq war in 2003, the question recurs: can we do anything about this impending disaster?

For lots of us, the moral case is reason enough to act. But throwing ourselves single-mindedly into building the movement against this intervention is not only the morally right thing to do, it can also have direct political effect. Not through wishful thinking, but based on grasping the moment we are in.

International division

There is great uncertainty in Washington over how to proceed. Barack Obama’s talk of “red-lines” over the use of chemical weapons has boxed him into a corner of threatening swift military action against Syria, while his generals warn that there is no strategic aim or clarity over what might be achieved.

The president who demanded two years ago that Bashar al-Assad stand down is now at pains to say that this bloody intervention will not be aimed at regime-change and will not lead to further operations in support of one side in the Syrian conflict.

Leave aside the fact that the US, its Gulf allies and Turkey are already heavily intervening. The point remains that in its official rationale the US and British governments are saying the purpose of bombing and maiming in Syria will be a “non-intervention” in terms of political outcome. The absurdity serves only to exacerbate all the establishment doubts about the unintended consequences of pouring fuel on the fire.

Syria’s allies – Russia, Iran and Hezbollah – are also, of course, intervening. Two years on from the revolutionary uprising, Syria is now a battleground for proxy forces and competing great power and regional interests. There have been long and at times bitter debates about the struggle in Syria. But for the left, whatever the position in that debate, what Obama, Cameron and Hollande propose now is not even purported to bring the victory of progressive forces in the country. If they are not claiming that, there is no reason for any of us to invest this bombing with moral worth or to haver in opposing it – in deed as well as word.

The UN route – gaining explicit support for military action from the Security Council – is blocked. The hubris of Western governments over Libya and the increasingly Cold War rhetoric against Vladimir Putin put paid to that, notwithstanding Russia’s own strategic interests in Syria and the region.

That leaves Britain and France, which both pressed for the Libya adventure. (Who talks of the success of that now: indeed Bernard Henry Levy, the clown-philosopher who urged the bombing of Libya, was told he could not visit Tripoli earlier this year as his Jewishness would make his hosts a target for jihadi attack.)

The France-UK-US (FUKUS) axis faces an extraordinary dilemma. Underpinning it is the weakening of the imperial architecture in the Middle East and the ongoing upheavals in the region. These are of epochal significance and will not be ended by the counter-revolutionary coup in Egypt or the debilitating civil war in Syria.

And there are further major differences with ten years ago. We are five years into an economic crisis. In parts of Europe it has produced big upsurges of social struggle. Everywhere it has weakened the legitimacy of governments and political elites – Obama’s included. It is the context for the residue of the enormous movement against the Iraq war in 2003.

On the anniversary of the start of that war there was much reflection on what the movement achieved – after all, Bush and Blair went to war anyway. While we did not stop the invasion of Iraq, the government launching a war against the will of its citizens reduced its legitimacy. Coupled with the destruction of Iraq, and its plundering for profit, Western governments have even less authority in the minds of the public now than then.

One look at the opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic over whether to bomb Syria shows that. There is very widespread opposition to military action. Both major parties in Britain backed the Iraq war. At the time of writing, Labour is at least partially opposed to bombing Syria.

It’s easy to take that for granted. But in most western countries at most times since the Second World War there has been clear public support for governments at war. The extent of anti-war sentiment, even if for most of the time most of it is passive, is an historic gain from the movement against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which went on in Britain also to oppose Israel’s wars on Gaza and on Lebanon and to mount a sustained argument against intervention in Libya and Syria.

That’s not a point for smug self satisfaction. Hundreds of thousands have died. It is a salient political factor now with which this government must reckon in the coming days over deciding whether to bomb Syria. It will play out in the coming months if it does bomb, with destabilising consequences, or if it does not, with fatally shattered prestige.

The problem of weakening hegemony in the Middle East and shrunken political capital at home has circumscribed Western policy for some time. Now it is immensely concentrated. Nowhere more so than in Britain.

Cameron’s arrogance and dilemma

For over 18 months Cameron and William Hague have tried to play the hard men over Syria, calling for greater action at international gatherings and threatening Damascus with other people’s F-16s. Now, the old Etonian’s arrogance has made Britain a weak link in the shaky FUKUS chain.

At the start of this week Cameron was strutting the airwaves pressing for immediate bombing. By Thursday he had been forced into a tactical retreat – though the intention to press ahead is clear. Washington too rowed back a little to give Cameron, facing potential parliamentary defeat, a lifeline.

Officials mooted that the date for bombing could be pushed back to the middle of next week. If anyone thinks they are in control of events, consider that on that timescale US and British planes will be bombing a Russian ally just as Obama and Cameron sit down in St Petersburg at the G20 summit, hosted by Putin.

The call for restraint by the UN’s Ban Ki-moon hardened Labour’s opposition to the government. On Wednesday it went from reluctant support for the government to tabling its own amendment in the parliamentary debate on Thursday. That amendment placed significant obstacles in the path to military action. But it said only that the UN Security Council must be allowed to consider and vote on the weapons inspectors’ report, not that a Security Council authorisation was necessary before Labour would support action.

Nevertheless, Labour MPs and others report that they are swayed by both the deep divisions in the political class and state structures over action and by the mounting public opposition. Diane Abbott’s political stock soared sharply when she said she would resign from the Labour frontbench if the party rushed into war.

The emergency demonstration called by Stop the War in London on Wednesday drew 1,000 people, extremely significant at short notice and in the bank holiday week.

It seems impossible now for the government to avoid a second parliamentary vote before bombing, and its own motion on Thursday in effect conceded that.

These are not trivial parliamentary games. They are the actual working out of the impasse of the government’s position. They mean that MPs who were expecting to be sunning themselves this weekend will now be in Britain subject to intense, contradictory pressures.

They mean that what was meant to be a lightening strike on Syria this week is now prolonged even before it begins. A question that was of concern for only a minority in Britain is now at the centre of national politics and life – should we support Cameron, should we bomb or not bomb, can we do anything about it.

A major public debate has erupted way beyond the circles and social media that we as activists use to talk with one another. The debate is open. Our opponents are an out of touch government that is inflicting deep social suffering on millions of people, most of whom declare that they are alienated from the official political parties.

The government is a coalition. Its majority depends on Lib Dem MPs, many of whom owe their seats to the anti-war posture the party took in 2003. They are particularly vulnerable to pressure, which in this instance means public opinion marshalled and concentrated into action and political engagement.

There are serious divisions in the Tory ranks too – usually reflective of foreign policy and military establishment concerns. Nevertheless, a move by anti-war MP Jeremy Corbyn and others of the left earlier this year to force the government to declare that it would seek parliamentary approval for any strike on Syria succeeded in winning support from Tory rebels.

A principled mass movement acting intelligently can drive a wedge deeper into the Tory ranks as well as stiffen the position of Labour MPs.

Mass movement – unity of purpose

Action now can make a difference. It requires taking the clear anti-war arguments which Stop the War is promoting and which are voiced by many others, including the Daily Mirror, deep into British society. All movements need activists, but we cannot simply be a movement of activists. We have to aim to be a mass movement of people who can be stirred by this question.

The fact that figures such as Peter Hain MP who supported the Iraq war are now strongly against bombing Syria is an indication that our anti-war argument can reach into new and broad layers. That feeling needs to be focused through public protest and through inundating MPs in order to tip the balance. There are many forms of action. Over the coming days the job is to hone them to a single point that will be felt in parliament and the government as they mull how to proceed.

There is every chance that we can play a big role in shifting the debate. What if we do not and they manage to press ahead anyway? Well, our efforts will have been far from futile.

First, whatever the blithe talk of a limited three day bombing with no fallout, the truth is that there will be major repercussions throughout the Middle East if they do go ahead. The only question is how great they will be. They will certainly mark a new phase in which the pressure for further action will intensify and with it the necessity of a strong, united movement of opposition, as well as solidarity with genuine progressive forces in the region.

Second, this is not about something happening far away to other people. It is about the direction of politics and society in Britain. The outcome of the next days and weeks will impact on the scale of opposition to the Coalition’s assaults on the mass of people at home.

A government weakened by defeat of its foreign policy, or even by its curtailment, is going to find it harder to deal with the protests in defence of the NHS, the strikes by public sector workers and the developing social resistance to its austerity policies.

Many of us have supported Stop the War or taken part in its mobilisations over the years. Quite naturally there has been ebb and flow, reflecting events and the possibility at any one time of achieving results. We’ve also had many healthy debates as the disaster of Western policy in the Middle East and the War on Terror has unfolded.

Now is a time to throw ourselves fully into this upswing of the movement – inundating MPs, taking to the streets on Saturday, getting ourselves into the media – mainstream, new and social – everywhere persuading friends, colleagues and family that we need to take a stand, and that by doing so we can make a difference.

Kevin Ovenden, 29 August 2013

Source: Stop the War Coalition

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| Stop the War Coalition welcomes Parliament’s rejection of war on Syria!

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Stop the War Coalition welcomes Parliament’s rejection of war on Syria ~ Stop the War Coalition.

For immediate release:

The Stop the War Coalition welcomes the defeat of David Cameron’s plan to attack Syria in parliament tonight. We didn’t stop the war in Iraq, but we did create a mass anti war opinion in Britain. That tide of anti war opinion has made itself felt in the past few days. MPs have in their majority refused to back a fourth intervention by western powers since 2001. They have for once reflected the majority public opinion in this country.

We now have to reject all attempts at intervention in Syria and to develop a foreign policy which is based on equality and justice, and the rights of national sovereignty.

The Tory led government will try to recoup the situation. We will demonstrate on Saturday against this intervention, whether by the US alone or with Britain involved. It is the aim of the anti-war movement to ensure that the US is forced to abandon the attack on Syria now that the country with which it is supposed to enjoy a ‘special relationship’ has carried a parliamentary vote against war.

For more information contact:
John Rees 07951 535 798 Chris Nineham 07930 536 519.

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| CONFIRMED: US claims against Syria – There is NO EVIDENCE!!

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CONFIRMED: US Claims Against Syria – There is no Evidence ~ Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer.

The Wall Street Journal reveals that the US is citing claims from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency fed to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

CIA blues

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed what many suspected, that the West’s so-called “evidence” of the latest alleged “chemical attacks” in Syria, pinned on the Syrian government are fabrications spun up from the West’s own dubious intelligence agencies.

The Wall Street Journal reveals that the US is citing claims from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency fed to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a repeat of the fabrications that led up to the Iraq War, the Libyan War, and have been used now for 3 years to justify continued support of extremists operating within and along Syria’s borders.

Wall Street Journal’s article, “U.S., Allies Prepare to Act as Syria Intelligence Mounts,” states:

One crucial piece of the emerging case came from Israeli spy services, which provided the Central Intelligence Agency with intelligence from inside an elite special Syrian unit that oversees Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons, Arab diplomats said. The intelligence, which the CIA was able to verify, showed that certain types of chemical weapons were moved in advance to the same Damascus suburbs where the attack allegedly took place a week ago, Arab diplomats said.

Both Mossad and the CIA are clearly compromised in terms of objectivity and legitimacy. Neither exists nor is expected to provide impartial evidence, but rather to facilitate by all means necessary the self-serving agendas, interests, and objectives of their respective governments.

That both Israel and the United States, as far back as 2007 have openly conspired together to overthrow the government of Syria through a carefully engineered sectarian bloodbath, discredits entirely their respective intelligence agencies. This is precisely why an impartial, objective third-party investigation has been called for by the international community and agreed upon by the Syrian government – a third-party investigation the US has now urged to be canceled ahead of its planned military strikes.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

In an email on Sunday, White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice told U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power and other top officials that the U.N. mission was pointless because the chemical weapons evidence already was conclusive, officials said. The U.S. privately urged the U.N. to pull the inspectors out, setting the stage for President Barack Obama to possibly move forward with a military response, officials said.

The US then, not Syria, is attempting a coverup, with fabrications in place from discredited, compromised intelligence sources and the threat of impending military strikes that would endanger the UN inspection team’s safety should they fail to end their investigation and withdraw.

The Wall Street Journal also reiterated that the US is planning to fully sidestep the UN Security Council and proceed with its partners unilaterally:

…if the U.S. chose to strike, it would do so with allies and without the U.N., in order to sidestep an expected Russian veto.

The US proceeds now with absolute disregard for international law, all but declaring it has no intention of providing credible evidence of its accusations against the Syrian government. It is a rush to war with all the hallmarks of dangerous desperation as the West’s proxy forces collapse before the Syrian military. Western military leaders must consider the strategic tenants and historical examples regarding the dangers and folly of haste and imprudence in war – especially war fought to protect special interests and political agendas rather than to defend territory.

The populations of the West must likewise consider what benefits they have garnered from the last decade of military conquest their leaders have indulged in. Crumbling economies gutted to feed the preservation of special interests and the growing domestic security apparatuses to keep these interests safe from both domestic and foreign dissent are problems that will only grow more acute.

Outside of the West, in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, leaders must consider a future where Western special interests can invade with impunity, without public support, or even the tenuous semblance of justification being necessary.

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| Wars of Choice: Cost to US of Iraq + Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion!

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Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion ~ Peter Foster, Washington, The Telegraph.

The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could reach as high as $6 trillion dollars – or $75,000 for every household in America – a new study from Harvard University has found.

Cost to US of Iraq and Afghan wars could hit $6 trillion

US soldiers march at a forward base near Najaf, Iraq, Thursday April 15, 2004 Photo: AP

The fresh calculation – which includes the cost of spiralling veterans’ care bills and the future interest on war loans – paints a grim picture of how America’s future at home and abroad has been mortgaged to the two conflicts entered into by George W Bush in 2001 and 2003.

“There will be no peace dividend,” is the stark conclusion from the 22-page report from the Kennedy School of Government, “and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be costs that persist for decades.”

The report comes as the US prepares for a final withdrawal from Afghanistan, a move that Barack Obama trumpeted in his State of the Union address as a sign that America was finally moving forward after a sapping decade of war.

However the working paper by Professor Linda J. Bilmes makes clear that the true legacy the two conflicts – which have cost $2 trillion in actual outlays so far – have not yet even begun to be appreciated.

“There’s a sense that we are turning the corner, but unfortunately, the legacy of these wars, because of decision about the way we fought and funded these wars, means we will be paying the costs for a long time to come,” Prof Bilmes said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph. “We may be mentally turning the page, but we are certainly not from a budgetary and financial perspective.”

The report, which builds on estimates in 2010 by Prof Bilmes and the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, highlights the stunning rise in long-term cost of treating veterans who both survive in greater numbers and seek treatment for a wider selection of ailments from back pain to post-traumatic stress disorders.

US marines with 1/3 Charlie Company take cover as they battle Taliban on the North East of Marjah in 2010 (AFP)

“More than half of the 1.56 million troops who have been discharged to date have received medical treatment at VA [Dept of Veteran Affairs] facilities and been granted benefits for the rest of their lives,” the report said, adding that the real bills will be incurred for decades to come.

“The peak year for paying disability compensation to World War I veterans was in 1969 – more than 50 years after Armistice. The largest expenditures for World War II veterans were in the late 1980s. Payments to Vietnam and first Gulf War veterans are still climbing,” it said.

The second major hidden cost of the two conflicts will be servicing the debts incurred as a result of the “unprecedented” decision to pay for the wars entirely from debt while cutting taxes during wartime – as the Bush administration did in 2001 and 2003.

The decision to finance the war through borrowing has already added $2 trillion to the US national debt – or about 20 per cent of the total national debt added between 2001 and 2012.

“The immediate budgetary cost has been $260 billion in interest paid for borrowings to date,” the report said, but warned that accrued interest on existing borrowings, and the cost of future borrowings would see the eventual bill “reaches into the trillions”.

The estimates dwarf the initial projections of the war costs. In 2002 Lawrence Lindsey, then President Bush’s chief economic adviser, estimated that the “upper-bound” costs of war against Iraq would be $200 billion, but added that the “successful prosecution” of the war would be good for the economy.

That notion is severely challenged by the report which warns that cost of the wars is already affecting investment in education, infrastructure and scientific research, and that a large proportion of the money spent did not help to grow the wider US economy.

The ‘baked in’ costs of higher wages and benefits for service personnel and better care for veterans is also likely to constrain the ability of the US Department of Defence to invest in maintaining and upgrading fighting forces.

“The war debt has been especially unhelpful. Large amounts have been spent on things that clearly did not benefit the United States – for example, $87 billion in reconstruction funding for Afghanistan, and $61 billion in Iraq, much of which has been squandered,” it said, citing official government reports.

“As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives.

“The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.”

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