Most Republicans still believe Iraq had WMD

Do these people not even try to educate themselves or are they proud to be ignorant? How does anyone have a rational discussion with people as irrational as this? Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post:

How misinformed are Republicans about world affairs? If presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia is "without question our number one geopolitical foe" is any indication, then the answer would appear to be very.

A new poll supports that theory.

The poll, constructed by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino and conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2, found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in 2003. By contrast, 27 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats shared that view.

Read the rest of this post...

Suicides increasing among US troops

From AP:

Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

I've worried for a while about the cost of war on individual servicemembers over all these years.  How do you live every minute of every day worrying about being killed, and not have it takes it toll after a matter of days, if not months and years?

I had and interview with Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz about the financial cost of war, which includes the cost of treating wounded (both physically and psychologically) servicemembers.  Stiglitz estimated that Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing the US more than $3 trillion. Here's that interview:

Read the rest of this post...

Welcome Home: Scott Ostrom's struggle with PTSD

Scott Ostrom served four years as a reconnaissance Marine, deploying for two tours in Iraq. Now 27 years old, he suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since being honorably discharged from the military he has struggled to maintain healthy relationships or keep a steady job. But the most difficult thing for him has been coping with his chilling memories of Iraq, and what they mean for him going forward:

The most important part of my life already happened. The most devastating... Nothing is ever going to compare to what I've done, so I'm struggling to be at peace with that.

Craig Walker of the Denver Post is set to receive a Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for his photo essay, entitled "Welcome Home," which documents Scott Ostrom's life as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The photos, and accompanying captions, provide a sobering reminder that the cost of war is measured in more than lives, dollars and poll numbers. I encourage readers to view the photo essay here.

As of April 2012, 6,422 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and 47,545 have been injured in combat. Countless more, including Scott Orstrom, suffer from post-traumatic stress.

Between 106,000 and 116,000 Iraqi civilians and 12,793 Afghan civilians have been killed have been killed. Thousands more have been injured; millions more have been displaced.

The next time our leaders consider sending American troops overseas, be it for promotion of American values or cynical national interests, they should think about Scott Ostrom. I challenge anyone to look at "Welcome Home" and, with a straight face, tell me that the invasion of Iraq was worth it. Read the rest of this post...

Massive amounts of money still missing or unexplained in Iraq

At least democracy is now firmly established in Iraq.

The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says. The missing records raise new questions about how the US government handled billions of dollars in Iraqi funds during the war.

Read the rest of this post...

Rick Perry promises to restart Iraq war

To be fair what Perry said was that he would send US troops back into Iraq. But the troops left because that is what an agreement with the Iraqi government signed during the Bush administration required and the Iraqi government refused to sign a new one because they wanted the troops to leave. If the US tried to send in troops now it would be an invasion.

Perry's rationale is confused and a-factual to say the least [Washington Post]

PERRY: I -- I think we start talking with the Iraqi individuals there. The idea that we allow the Iranians to come back into Iraq and take over that country, with all of the treasure, both in blood and money, that we have spent in Iraq, because this president wants to kowtow to his liberal, leftist base and move out those men and women. He could have renegotiated that timeframe.

I think it is a huge error for us. We’re going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light. They’re going to move back in, and all of the work that we’ve done, every young man that has lost his life in that country will have been for nothing because we’ve got a president that does not understand what’s going on in that region.

Notice how these Republicans pour contempt on Obama for not understanding what is going on while demonstrating that they know absolutely of what they are talking about. Equally telling, how McElveen passed the issue to Ron Paul:

I want to give Congressman Paul a chance to weigh in here, because foreign policy is something that a lot of people think is your Achilles’ heel when it comes to getting elected.

Get that? Perry just proposed re-invading Iraq and Paul is the one whose Foreign Policy is a problem!

Iraq's current government is a coalition that was brokered by Iran. So anyone attempting to prevent the spread of Iranian influence in Iraq is rather late. The idea that the US should have a greater influence in Iraq than its next door neighbor is arrogant and stupid. There are few countries that are as far apart culturally as Iraq and the US.

It is not Obama's fault that George W. Bush's war has been a catastrophe that cost 4400 US soldiers and half a million Iraqis their lives and been a complete waste in every sense. The real fault goes to all those politicians of both parties who said nothing when Bush was starting the war. Read the rest of this post...

GOP says Occupy Iraq, not Wall Street

Don't hold your breath waiting for the GOP to congratulate Obama on his handling of the wars in Libya or Iraq. They don't like Occupy Wall Street but they love Occupy Iraq so much they don't ever want to see the end of it.

According to GOP mythology it was 'the surge' that reduced the violence in Iraq. Nonsense. What really ended the violence was the US public voting for Democrats in the 2006 mid terms. It was the GOP losses in the mid terms that forced Bush to finally sack Rumsfeld and other incompetents and to at last start running the Iraq war in the way that the professional military had advised from the start. And it was that same GOP defeat in the mid-terms that started to convince the Iraqi insurgents fighting against the US occupation that the invaders might actually leave of their own accord.

Make no mistake about it, as Glenn Greenwald points out, the agreement to withdraw US forces from Iraq is merely fulfilling the commitment made by the Bush administration. Factions within the government were attempting to negotiate an extension of the occupation up to the last minute. But even the idea that the US must abide by its commitments to other countries has become a point of distinction between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats think that the US should honor its obligations and Republicans think it should ignore any that they consider inconvenient.

John McCain had hoped that the US would stay in Iraq for '100 years' and slammed today's announcement:

Today marks a harmful and sad setback for the United States in the world. I respectfully disagree with the President: this decision will be viewed as a strategic victory for our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime, which has worked relentlessly to ensure a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. It is a consequential failure of both the Obama Administration — which has been more focused on withdrawing from Iraq than succeeding in Iraq since it came into office — as well as the Iraqi government.

What I would like to see is a journalist asking McCain what he proposes Obama should have done instead. Should he have ignored the Iraqi parliament and kept the troops anyway? Should he have allowed the troops to be stationed in Iraq without immunity from Iraqi laws? How is it possible to build democracy in a country by ignoring the results of the elections that take place? But no, the establishment media never seem to ask such questions of McCain, to expose the fact that he is full of it might appear partisan.

Of course Iran is going to be a bigger influence on Iraq after the US withdrawal. Iran has been the biggest influence in Iraq since the 2005 elections. Unlike the neo-con clique that plotted the US invasion, the Iranian regime realized that their country would benefit from a second US-Iraq war regardless of the outcome. Chalabai's Iraqi National Congress was known in intelligence circles as an Iranian front throughout the 1990s.

Iran will have a greater influence in Iraq than the US regardless of how many US troops are stationed there because of the simple fact that the two countries are next to each other and both have majority Shi'ia populations. The US is an English speaking country with a largely Christian population and a capital 6200 miles from Baghdad.

The best way for the US to counter Iran's growing influence is to support the emergence of strong democratic Islamic powers that can protect legitimate US interests without the need for US occupation. As the operation in Libya has proved, the US can achieve results that further US interests without feeling the need to lead the fighting in every war that comes along.

Contrary to what McCain and the other Republicans imagine, the rising powers in the Middle East are Turkey and Egypt. Iran's influence grew under Bush but is now shrinking under Obama. The US withdrawal will actually reduce the Iranian influence in Iraq as factions that previously attempted to play one foreign power off against another seek to eliminate foreign interference completely. Meanwhile Iranian influence in Syria is only as strong as the embattled Syrian regime. Should Assad fall, the Iranian regime will be too busy fighting for its own survival to worry much about regional power status.
Read the rest of this post...

Breaking: Obama says All US troops are leaving Iraq by the end of the year

Okay, that was a surprise. From CNN (via email):

The United States will withdraw almost all its troops from Iraq by the end of the year, as a current agreement with Iraq dictates, a U.S. official told CNN on Friday. Only about 150 troops, a negligible force, will remain to assist in arms sales. The United States had expected that some of the roughly 40,000 Americans in Iraq would remain there to aid in training and security. But the two nations were unable to reach a deal on a key issue regarding legal immunity for U.S. troops, a senior U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the discussions told CNN this month.

More from the Washington Post.

Have to admit, I never thought it would happen. As lousy as the economy is going, I have to say that Obama has wrapped up some darn good foreign successes over the past year.

ABC's Jake Tapper tweets, "WH says 4-5,000 security contractors will remain in Iraq." Sounds like Blackwater. I'd like to see the cost of that. Read the rest of this post...

GOP presidential debate audience boos US soldier serving in Iraq because he’s gay

If a Democratic debate audience had done this, it would be the only thing we heard about for the next 14 months. They just booed a US soldier serving in combat. Think about that. This is what the Republican party has become. A bunch of far-right bigots and extremists. The Tea Party and the evangelical nuts run the entire thing now.

And watch Rick Santorum not say a peep when these right-wing freaks are booing a US soldier serving in combat.

Read the rest of this post...

Sadrists demand removal of all troops from Iraq

As Juan Cole points out, 3,000 US troops in Iraq are not troops, they are hostages.

If the troops are attacked it is likely to result in more troops being sent in and a possible third US-Iraq war. Besides which many Iraqi's do not want them there:

The Muqtada al-Sadr nativist Shiite movement in Iraq is planning a huge demonstration in downtown Baghdad on Friday, in favor of three demands. The first is that the Iraqi government announce an immediate jobs program that would put 50,000 Iraqis to work, from all ethnicities and religious groups. The second is that the Iraqi government give each Iraqi a royalty payment on Iraqi oil profits (ironically a suggestion once made by US viceroy in Iraq, Paul “Jerry” Bremer and modeled on a program in Alaska). The third is that there be no US troops at all in Iraq by the end of the year or earlier.

These are not idle demands:

The Sadrists not only have a proven ability to put a lot of people in the streets, but their some 40 seats in parliament are key to the governing coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, so that he ignores them to his peril. The Iraqi constitution allows for parliament to call for a vote of no confidence if 50 MPs sign off on it, and rivals of al-Maliki such as Ayad Allawi have been calling for early elections.

Meanwhile the US establishment is busy debating with itself how many troops the US should keep in Iraq as if it was their decision to make.

The report brought howls of outrage from Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who say they want to keep 25,000 troops in Iraq. I am not sure why McCain and Graham believe that this decision is their own. The only legal document governing this issue is a Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Iraqi parliament and the Bush White House in late 2008, which stipulates that there must be no US troops in Iraq at all by December 31 of this year.

Their reason? Iran. Seems that McCain and Graham have completely failed to notice that in the wake of the 2010 elections, Iran chose the Iraqi government. One of the (many) reasons I opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place was that it would inevitably increase the influence of Iran.

The US presided over the destruction of a Sunni-dominated secular Arab nationalist regime and the installation of a government led by fundamentalist Shiites, many of whom had lived in exile in Iran and had excellent relations with Tehran. That cow is out of the barn, and the presence of US troops is unlikely to be relevant to the budding Tehran-Baghdad-Damascus axis, which is a political reality.

Read the rest of this post...

The Iraq surge accomplished nothing

Matthew Yglesias has been asking what was accomplished by the surge in Iraq. His conclusion:

I take this all to be a reminder that “success” or “failure” of policy is interest-relative and that if you’re a normal person, the surge didn’t succeed in achieving anything at all. The best Exum could do in response to a skeptic is to say that the surge laid the groundwork for leaving years later thus saving me money relative to an endless occupation baseline. But we could, of course, have saved even more money by leaving sooner. Now needless to say there are lots of other interests in play other than the interests of the average American. Opting to surge rather than withdraw did lead to the death or maiming of many American soldiers. And opting to surge rather than withdraw cost the taxpayers a lot of money. But it also allowed important factions within the American national security apparatus to claim that withdrawal from Iraq was happening on terms of victory (we’re leaving because the country is stabilized because we’re awesome) rather than on terms of defeat (we’re leaving because the occupation is unworkable).

I think he overstates the case for the surge. While it is true that the surge coincided with the situation in Iraq getting better, it also coincided with several other events that quite likely had a bigger effect.

Remember that the surge itself was a response to the dramatic defeat of the GOP in the 2006 mid terms.

Up to the 2006 mid-terms it made perfect sense for Iraqi nationals to regard the US military as an occupation force: That is precisely what it was. The single most important change in the situation in Iraq was the message sent by the US people: Hell no we are not going to stay in Iraq forever. The cause that the insurgents were fighting for was to get the US out of their country, to pretend otherwise is self-deception.

The mid-terms forced Bush's hand. Up to that point the response to evidence that a policy was not working was to try it harder. The mid-terms forced Bush to fire Rumsfeld and hand the management of the occupation over to Gates who promptly fired or isolated the policy people responsible for the majority of the blunders.

To the extent that the 'surge' made a difference, it was that the US stopped doing things that were only going to make the situation worse and started to employ the tactics that pre-existing US military doctrine would have directed in the first place had Rumsfeld not been allowed to run the show as an experiment.

The tactics employed in the surge were not novel concepts invented by Gen. Petreaus, the British troops employed the same approach from the start. Nor was the US military entirely ignorant of this approach: My friend at the Naval Postgraduate school tells me that they have been established for decades.

Yglesias is certainly right to point out that at best all that the surge has achieved is to allow the militarists to avoid the humiliation of a defeat. But the role of the surge was political, not military. The GOP defeat in the 2006 mid terms was the event that allowed the situation in Iraq to improve. The surge was merely a device that allowed the Bush administration to claim credit. Read the rest of this post...

Stiglitz on pharmaceutical prices; and the four major causes of the worsening of the national debt

In this latest installment of Chris' and my interview with Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz this past Sunday, August 28, 2011 in Paris, Stiglitz talks about the four major causes of the deficit.

STIGLITZ: I try to remind people that just ten years ago we had a very large surplus, 2% of GDP, so big that Greenspan said that if we didn't do something about the surplus, we would entirely pay down the national debt, and it would be difficult for him to conduct monetary policy. An important reminder of why we should be skeptical of the Federal Reserve -- that it is a political institution, not just an economic institution. It has a political agenda, or it had in the past.

Four things brought us from where we were then, huge surpluses, to where we are now. And those things were:

First, the tax cut for the rich that we couldn't afford.

Two very expensive wars.... The budgetary cost so far have been around $2 trillion, but we were, in our book, underestimate the future cost, almost one out of 2 people coming back form Iraq and Afghanistan are disabled. And we've estimated that the cost of paying for health and disability for these may be approaching $1 trillion. So this is not even reflected in the official account, these are our estimates, corroborated by others, of what these future costs are likely to be.

The third is, a very good thing that we did, which was to provide prescription benefits under Medicare for the aged. But we made again a mistake, Bush made a mistake, and that was to say that even though the government is the largest buyer of prescription drugs, it could not negotiate with the drug companies, and that led to those high costs that you were referring to, estimated by some people over a period of ten years, about a trillion dollars extra given to the drug companies. That's another major source of our deficit.

The banks were very good at making political investments, and the same thing was true of the drug industry. They've been very hard pressed to come up with new drugs, but the money they're spending in Washington is yielding high dividends, and this is an example of those high dividends.

The final cause of the change of our framework from the surplus that we had ten years ago, just ten years ago, to where we are today, is the economic downturn. And that's why the most important thing for dealing with the deficit is putting America back to work. And that's where a stimulus package is absolutely essential. Proposals for more austerity cutbacks are going to make that even worse, and prospects of a real significant reduction in the deficit not very good.

Previous interview snipets:

* Stiglitz: Probabilities of a double dip recession "certainly have increased significantly" (3:17 long)

* Stiglitz: Obama administration and the Fed have demonstrated an "inability to make economic judgements." (1:09 long)

* Stiglitz: "The Fed is very good at creating problems, not so good at resolving them.... QE3 won’t help" (6:46 long)

* Stiglitz: "The only thing that can be done (to help the economy in the near term) is fiscal stimulus, spending more money." (1:01 long)

* Stiglitz: We are bearing the consequences of Obama/Congress not pushing state/local aid in 1st stimulus. (2:05)

* Stiglitz on Dodd-Frank: "We are once again at risk of a freezing of the credit system" (4:04) Read the rest of this post...

Cheney doesn’t think the Iraq war has hurt the US’ image abroad

Sure.

“I don’t think that it damaged our reputation around the world,’’ he told Matt Lauer. “I just don’t believe that. I think the critics at home want to argue that. In fact, I think it was sound policy that dealt with a very serious problem and eliminated Saddam Hussein from the kind of problem he presented before.

“What would’ve happened this week if Moammar Gadhafi had still been in power with a nuclear weapon in Libya? Would he have fled? I doubt it.’’

I love that last little line about Gadhafi he threw in there. What does that have to do with anything, since of course we now know that Saddam not only didn't have nukes, he didn't even have any WMD at all. Now we're pretending Gadhafi had them too? Read the rest of this post...

US wasting $34 billion with contractors in wars

And let's be honest that this is probably only part of it. Even with these eye-popping numbers, the other costs that need to be eliminated are the war costs themselves. If we're going to start throwing costs on retired Americans and the middle class, it's time to end these wasteful wars. We can't afford them yet they continue to get a free pass in Washington. It's unfair to ask for belt-tightening at home and free spending for wars that nobody understands or even cares about. Even the corporate media doesn't bother to mention the wars these days so no wonder people don't discuss them.

Do we have an economic crisis at home or don't we?

The United States has wasted some $34 billion on service contracts with the private sector in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study being finalized for Congress.

The findings by a bipartisan congressional commission were confirmed to Reuters by a person familiar with the draft of the study, which is due to be completed in coming weeks.

The analysis by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, details of which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, offers the most complete look so far at the misuse of U.S. contracting funds in Afghanistan and Iraq, where more than $200 billion has been doled out in the contracts and grants over nearly a decade.

Read the rest of this post...

Cost of Iraq and Afghanistan could reach $4 trillion

That is an obscene amount of money. It's also the sum of money the President offered to recoup with his deficit reduction plan. We wouldn't even need a deficit reduction plan had George Bush not gotten us into these wars (though, I will say I thought Afghanistan was necessary - Iraq, not so much).

HuffPost:

The United States will have spent a total of $3.7 trillion on wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, costing 225,000 lives and creating 7.8 million refugees, by the time the conflicts end, according to a report released on Wednesday by Brown University.

The report estimates the U.S. government has already spent between $2.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion...

Read the rest of this post...

$20 billion per year to provide A/C for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Somehow many can think of quite a few ways $20 billion could be spent back home. We really need to unload those unnecessary wars and start focusing a lot more on the problems in the US. NPR:

The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.

That's more than NASA's budget. It's more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It's what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.

"When you consider the cost to deliver the fuel to some of the most isolated places in the world — escorting, command and control, medevac support — when you throw all that infrastructure in, we're talking over $20 billion," Steven Anderson tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. Anderson is a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq.

Read the rest of this post...

US money missing from Iraq may be closer to $18 billion

Not to worry though. Just because our infrastructure is crumbling at home and unemployment is high, we really couldn't use that money anyway. It's much better to flush it down the toilet in Iraq. Al Jazeera:

Osama al-Najai, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn.

Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Najai said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week.

"There is a lot of money missing during the first American administration of Iraqi money in the first year of occupation.

"Iraq's development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations - their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure.

Instead of worrying about a tweeted penis, maybe we ought to focus a bit more on the wars that are killing the US economy. No? Read the rest of this post...

$6.6 billion of US taxpayer money missing in Iraq

If they can't properly follow money like this, chances are good that there is a lot more waste where that came from. Where's the accountability in the Pentagon?

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.

For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be "the largest theft of funds in national history."

The mystery is a growing embarrassment to the Pentagon, and an irritant to Washington's relations with Baghdad. Iraqi officials are threatening to go to court to reclaim the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, seized Iraqi assets and surplus funds from the United Nations' oil-for-food program.

Read the rest of this post...

The United States — One nation under contract

Thanks to Scott Horton, we have a good short interview with Professor Allison Stanger, author of the new book, One Nation Under Contract, a book which, in Horton's words, "takes a close look at the outsourcing of national security and foreign policy functions in the last decade."

Here are a few excerpts from that interview — I urge you to read the rest (my emphasis below):

1. You track the growing dependence of the federal government on contractors–from a little more than $200 billion in 2000 to about $440 billion in 2007. What shifts in policy account for this explosive growth in the use of contractors?

The main factor was the privatization of war. Iraq and Afghanistan are America’s first contractors’ wars, with contractors often outnumbering uniformed personnel on the ground in both conflicts. This development is new and unprecedented. At the height of the Vietnam War, contractors represented just 14 percent of the American presence on the ground. Without contractors, we would need a draft to wage these two wars, and with a draft, we would obviously have a very different political situation.

While wartime contracting and successive supplemental appropriations have fueled these dramatic trends, this is not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans alike embraced outsourcing the work of government to the private sector whenever possible, both as a perceived cost-savings measure and as a mechanism for getting things done more efficiently. But the unprecedented explosion of contracting—to use Defense Secretary Gates’s language, “willy-nilly” contracting—to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan was a tale of unprecedented waste, fraud, and abuse (PDF). Taxpayer money obviously cannot be well spent when government is not following the money.

And what about the current president's role in this?

The trends mapped in the book have continued unabated under the Obama Administration, and in many ways our dependence on contractors has grown. When the State Department replaces the U.S. military in Iraq, they will be wholly reliant on contractors to pursue the mission. To make matters worse, Congress is currently poised to slash funding for open government initiatives from $35 million to $8 million on President Obama’s watch.

She goes on to talk about the still-incomplete, invaluable government site USASpending.gov, which was vital to her in her research. The current proposed spending cuts are implemented, she thinks that site would be closed.

Stanger calls that "ironic." To me, that sounds like the goal.

This is one of those topics on which many of us think we know the broad strokes (we do; this is looting on a massive scale), and don't realize or expose ourselves to the wealth of detail that makes those broad strokes broad.

Professor Stanger has the numbers and the analysis. The information is accessible and shocking. For example: "Department of Defense spent $133.2 billion on contracts and by 2008, that figure had grown to $391.9 billion, an almost three-fold increase." And phrases like taxpayer money "flowing through subcontracts into the pockets of the Taliban" come up.

There's more where that came from, and Horton recommends the book highly. Please do click through if government contracting and privatization is on your reading radar.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Iraq oil supply was "vital" to UK interests

The next thing you know, some might suggest oil is playing a role in supporting the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya. How shocking.

Despite Tony Blair and his ministers' public insistence that Iraq's vast oil reserves – then estimated at 112 billion barrels – were a matter for the Iraqis alone, officials warned a meeting of the "inter-departmental Oil Sector Liaison Group (OSLG)" that appearing "gratuitously exploitative" in its policy goals – which included the aim to "maximise benefit to British industry and thus British employment/economy" – could "backfire politically".

Minutes of a meeting held on 12 May 2003 starkly spell out the importance of the issue, stating: "The future shape of the Iraqi industry will affect oil markets, and the functioning of Opec, in both of which we have a vital interest."

The latest disclosures follow the publication yesterday of minutes of meetings held between senior oil-industry executives and government ministers in the run-up to the war – despite official claims that no such talks occurred. The first of three documents assessing the situation in the immediate aftermath of the invasion sets out what is described as "required action" resulting from a meeting attended by representatives from key government departments including the Foreign Office, the then Department of Trade and Industry, the Department for International Development and the Treasury.

Read the rest of this post...

Gates says US will stay in Iraq longer

The never-ending war machine. If Congress is going to cut the budget for everyone at home, why can we find the budget to continue this? Gates has to like the budget war at home, so Iraq mostly stays out of the press and out of mind for most Americans. BBC News:

US troops could if required by Iraq stay in the country beyond the agreed withdrawal date of 31 December, 2011, the US defence secretary has said.

Robert Gates, who is visiting Iraq, says an extended military presence is an option.

"If folks here are going to want us to have a presence, we're going to need to get on with it pretty quickly in terms of our planning," he said.

A large number of the 50,000 US troops in Iraq are due to leave in the summer.

Read the rest of this post...