Study: Iraq War Cost U.S. $2.2 Trillion, Claimed Nearly 200,000 Lives

By Ben Armbruster/Think Progress

A new report by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies finds that nearly 200,000 people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed in the war in Iraq President George W. Bush launched 10 years ago.

The report also found that American taxpayers will ultimately spend roughly $2.2 trillion on the war, but because the U.S. government borrowed to finance the conflict, interest payments through the year 2053 means that the total bill could reach nearly $4 trillion.

“Nearly every government that goes to war underestimates its duration, neglects to tally all the costs, and overestimates the political objectives that will be accomplished by war’s violence,” said Boston University professor of political science and project co-director Neta C. Crawford.

Indeed, the war devastated the Iraqi health care system and allowed militants to hone their skills and export them to neighboring conflicts:

Terrorism in Iraq increased dramatically as a result of the invasion and tactics and fighters were exported to Syria and other neighboring countries.

Iraq’s health care infrastructure remains devastated from sanctions and war. More than half of Iraq’s medical doctors left the country during the 2000s, and tens of thousands of Iraqi patients are forced to seek health care outside the country.

The Watson Institute project — which involves “30 economists, anthropologists, lawyers, humanitarian personnel, and political scientists from 15 universities, the United Nations, and other organizations” — comes on the heals of the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction’s final report released last week finding that the U.S. spent $60 billion on reconstruction efforts in Iraq and that $10 billion of it was wasted on fraud and abuse.

Reuters reported that Steven Bucci, the military assistant to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the war and today a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, didn’t dispute the report’s findings but said the U.S.’s post-invasion battles with al-Qaeda in Iraq — a group that did not exist prior to March 19, 2003 — made the war worth it.

“It was really in Iraq that ‘al Qaeda central’ died,” Bucci said. “They got waxed.”

Meanwhile, the AP reported this afternoon that “a string of explosions tore through central Baghdad within minutes of each other on Thursday, followed by what appeared to be a coordinated assault by gunmen who battled security forces in the Iraqi capital.” The AP said the attack — which reportedly killed 12 people — “bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s Iraq arm.”

U.S. Wasted Billions Rebuilding Iraq

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

As the 10th anniversary of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq approaches, the body charged with overseeing Iraq’s reconstruction has issued its final report, capping a tale of spending far too much money for very little results.

Appointed in Oct. 2004, over a year into War in Iraq, the Special Inspector-General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) was charged withbeing a watchdog over the use of funds provided for rebuilding the Iraqi state after the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Those reconstruction and stabilization efforts wound up costing nearly $60 billion — or about $15 million per day — with up to $10 billion of that amount wasted, according to SIGIR Stuart Bowen.

The examples provided of fraud and abuse of the system are staggering both in number and nature. Among the most telling boondoggles is an $108 million waste-water treatment facilityin Fallujah, Iraq that will be completed eight years over schedule. Once finished in 2014, it will only service 9,000 homes and require an additional $87 million from Iraq to provide service to the rest of the buildings in the city.

In terms of outright abuse, Iraqis and Americans alike were culprits, with one former Iraqi Defense Minister’s squandering $1.3 billion. Earmarked to provide for an Iraqi “quick reaction force,” the money was instead spent on various bribes, kickbacks, and purchasing useless equipment. Likewise, former U.S. Army Major John Cockerham was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison for siphoning off millions of dollars from reconstruction projects by accepting bribes from various contractors.

The majority of Bowen’s lessons learned provided to Congress deal extensively with the completely unprepared way in which the United States chose to rebuild Iraq. Bowen gives seven ways to better perform rebuilding operations in the future:

1. Create an integrated civilian-military office to plan, execute, and be accountable for contingency rebuilding activities during stabilization and reconstruction operations.

2. Begin rebuilding only after establishing sufficient security, and focus first on small programs and projects.

3. Ensure full host-country engagement in program and project selection, securing commitments to share costs (possibly through loans) and agreements to sustain completed projects after their transfer.

4. Establish uniform contracting, personnel, and information management systems that all SRO participants use.

5. Require robust oversight of SRO activities from the operation’s inception.

6. Preserve and refine programs developed in Iraq, like the Commander’s Emergency Response Program and the Provincial Reconstruction Team program, that produced successes when used judiciously.

7. Plan in advance, plan comprehensively and in an integrated fashion, and have backup plans ready to go.

Many of those suggestions belie the cavalier attitude struck by Republicans at the beginning of the war in 2003, despite a near complete lack of planning by the Bush administration to provide for rebuilding Iraq. “Each day it gets better,” then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in May 2003 of the reconstruction efforts. Rumsfeld also insisted that “the bulk of the funds for Iraq’s reconstruction will come from Iraqis” in October of that year. $60 billion later, Iraq has proved to be nowhere near the “cakewalk” predicted by George W. Bush adviser Kenneth Adelman predicted in 2002.

Hagel Takes On McCain: Calls Iraq War ‘Most Fundamentally Bad, Dangerous Decision Since Vietnam’

I'm still mad that I lost to that tall nergo Kenyan socialist.

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

The confirmation hearing of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to take on the role of Secretary of Defense — already sure to be testy — heated up with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pointedly asking Hagel to justify his stance on the Iraq War.

McCain, an ardent supporter of the Iraq War from the start, began his questioning of Hagel by asking about the latter’s past statements regarding the so-called “surge” of forces into Iraq in 2007. Hagel, by then a vocal critic of the war, came out strongly against adding additional troops to the conflict soon after the policy’s announcement — just like President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had — calling it “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.”

Hagel didn’t back away from previous statements, saying “Senator, I stand by them, because I made them.” When McCain continued to push Hagel, refusing to allow him to offer a nuanced response to the question of the surge, the Nebraska Republican shot back, noting that the surge tactic took place in the wider context of the most “dangerous decision since Vietnam”:

MCCAIN: Are you going to answer the question? Were you right or wrong? That’s a straightforward question. Answer whether you are right or wrong and then you are free to elaborate.

HAGEL: I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer.

MCCAIN: Let the record show he refuses to answer the question. Please go ahead.

[...]

HAGEL: I’m not going to give you a yes or no. It’s far more complicated than that. I will defer that judgment to history. As to the comment I made about the most dangerous foreign policy decision since Vietnam, that was about not just the surge, but the overall war of choice going into Iraq. That particular decision made on the surge, but more to the point, our war in Iraq, I think was the most fundamentally bad, dangerous decision since Vietnam.

Watch their exchange here:

“Aside from the cost that occurred to blood and treasure, what that did to take our focus off of Afghanistan, which in fact was the original and real focus of the national threat to this country. Iraq was not. I always tried to frame all of the different issues before I made a decision on anything,” Hagel continued. Hagel’s response is a continuation of his previous assertions that the war in Iraq is one of the “great blunders” of American history.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) picked up on Hagel’s critique in his questioning, referring to Iraq as a war that never should have taken place. “I always ask the question is this going to be worth the sacrifice, because there will be sacrifice,” Hagel said in response. “In the surge in Iraq, we lost almost 1200 dead Americans and thousands of wounded. Was it required? Was it necessary?” Over four thousand Americans total lost their lives during the Iraq War.

Hagel is also in the right, of course, that the surge can’t be viewed as the only cause for a reduction of violence in Iraq. CAP Senior Fellow Larry Korb and Policy Analyst Matt Duss today published an op-ed in Politico making clear that Hagel’s stance on Iraq was essentially correct:

While historians will of course continue to debate the actual impact that the addition of 20,000 U.S. troops made on the war’s outcome, a rough consensus has developed that recognizes that while the addition of troops did make some positive impact, it did so mainly by facilitating events that were already underway, such as the revolt by Sunnis in Anbar province against al-Qaeda and the decision by Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr to stand down his Mahdi Army militia.

The argument between McCain and Hagel marks the latest low point in a relationship between two previously close friends. In 2000, during his first run at the presidency, McCain cited Hagelas a potential Secretary of Defense should he take the White House.

Fearing High Gas Prices, Sean Hannity Proposes Re-Invading Iraq and Kuwait To ‘Take All Their Oil’

By George Zornick

Tonight’s Hannity on Fox News featured a discussion by the Great American Panelabout high gas prices, which host Sean Hannity claimed are “now gonna go up to three, four, five dollars a gallon again.” The panel ruefully noted that Arab sheiks possess great amounts of oil, and pointed out a recent statement by Kuwait’s oil minister that he believes the market can withstand $100-per-barrel oil. After noting that Kuwait is a country that “would not exist [but] for us,” Hannity angrily offered his remedy:

HANNITY: There’s two things I said. I say why isn’t Iraq paying us back with oil, and paying every American family and their soldiers that lost loved ones or have injured soldiers — and why didn’t they pay for their own liberation? For the Kuwait oil minister — how short his memory is. You know, we have every right to go in there and frankly take all their oil and make them pay for the liberation, as these sheiks, etcetera etcetera, you know were living in hotels in London and New York, as Trump pointed out, and now they’re gouging us and saying ‘oh of course we can withstand [these prices].’”

Watch it:

In the most recent invasion of Iraq, there have been 4,442 American combat deaths and over 30,000 injuries, many of them traumatic and debilitating. The cost of the war is at $3 trillion and counting, and the invasion demolished America’s global standing. Apparently, Hannity would be willing to re-pay this cost for cheaper gasoline.

Hannity also acts as if Iraq should be grateful for the invasion and turn over its natural resources. Of course, anywhere from 100,000 to one million Iraqi civilians died during the unwanted invasion, which destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure andcultural heritage.

On the other hand, Hannity has previously noted that he “travel(s) on private planes, [and] I have an SUV that I’m proud of.” Surely, the hundred-millionaire would be hurt by $3-per-gallon gas.

Chris Wallace Calls The Perpetually Wrong Bill Kristol An ‘Expert’ On Iraq

By Matt Duss

Demonstrating again Fox News’ hilariously low standards, this morning Fox News’ Chris Wallace referred to Bill Kristol as an “expert in [the] area” of Iraq’s elections:

WALLACE: Bill, you certainly are an expert in this area. The two leading candidates seem to be the current prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, and the original prime minister [Ayad] Allawi. From the U.S. point of view, who would we rather see?

KRISTOL: I honestly don’t know. I think — the good news has been the degree of reformist parties and the new leaders who have begun to emerge in the Iraqi political system.

Watch it:

Kristol has spent the last decade proving that he doesn’t know. Here’s a classic example of Kristol’s Iraq “expertise” from 2003:

On this issue of the Shia in Iraq, I think there’s been a certain amount of, frankly, a kind of pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.

Months later, Iraq would explode into a civil war driven by competing radical Sunni and Shia militias trying to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime.

Kristol’s propensity for error is so serious that, according to Newsweek’s Eric Margolis, Bill’s late father Irving Kristol sometimes lamented to an old family friend, “My poor son has got it wrong again.” Journalist Eric Alterman wrote in the Nation, “if one looks for a consistent pattern to Kristol’s perpetual wrongness, it’s not hard to discern. For Kristol is less interested in being correct than in advancing his side’s interests. He’s not a journalist; he’s an apparatchik working undercover as a man of the press.”

In other words, the perfect Fox News journalist.