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April 17, 2009
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Iraq study: Executions are
leading cause of death
by KIM GAMEL , The Associated Press
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Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:27 AM
BAGHDAD -- Execution-style killings, not headline-grabbing bombings, have been the leading cause of death among civilians in the Iraq war, a study released Wednesday shows. The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, point to the brutal sectarian nature of the conflict, where death squads once roamed the streets hunting down members of the rival Muslim sect.
Estimates of the number of civilians killed in Iraq vary widely. The study was based on the database maintained by Iraq Body Count, a private group that among other sources uses media reports including those of The Associated Press.
The authors concede the data is not comprehensive but maintain that the study provides a reliable gauge of how Iraqis have died in the six-year conflict.
The findings also provide further evidence of the brutal sectarian cleansing and retaliatory violence between Shiites and Sunnis that pushed the country to the brink of civil war before easing a year and a half ago.
"I think that a lot of the executions with torture had to do with trying to get people to move out of their houses," said Michael Spagat, one of the study's authors. "It had to strike fear into people's hearts. A lot of it is just hatred and retribution."
The study covered the period from the March 20, 2003 invasion through March 19, 2008, in which 91,358 violent deaths were recorded by Iraq Body Count.
Balance of article . . . .
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Another $77.1 Billion for
the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
NPP Releases Local Cost of War Breakdowns and Launches Cost of Afghanistan War
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 14, 2009
3:20 PM
CONTACT: National Priorities Project
Jo Comerford, Executive Director
413-584-9556 (o); 413-559-1649 (cell)
NORTHAMPTON, Mass. - April 14 - As Congress considers President Obama's $83.4 billion supplemental request for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2009, $77.1 billion of which is dedicated to Iraq and Afghanistan war funding, National Priorities Project offers a state-level tradeoff and breakdowns of U.S. war spending costs by state, congressional district, county and town. NPP's trade-offs page offers similar breakdowns for approved totals to date and the pending supplemental, showing what the equivalent sums could buy in healthcare, education and renewable energy services.
Of the $77.1 billion war spending request, roughly $52.7 billion is dedicated to the Iraq War, while $24.4 will fund the expanded U.S. war in Afghanistan. The total cost for both wars, including approved spending and the pending supplemental is $907.3 billion.
Balance of release . . . .
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Cost of Iraq war will surpass
Vietnam's by year's end
by By Julian E. Barnes, LA Times
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If Congress approves the latest funding request, as expected, the Iraq war will have cost about $694 billion, making it the second most expensive conflict in U.S. history behind World War II.
April 11, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- The amount of U.S. money spent on the Iraq war will surpass the cost of Vietnam by the end of the year, making it the second most expensive military conflict in American history, behind World War II, according to Pentagon figures provided Friday.
If Congress approves the supplemental funding request submitted this week by the Obama administration, the cost of the war will rise by $87 billion for 2009, including a previous supplement approved during the Bush administration.
Added to the amount spent through 2008, it would mean the Iraq war will have cost taxpayers a total of about $694 billion. By comparison, the Vietnam War cost $686 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars and World War II cost $4.1 trillion, according to a Congressional Research Service study completed last year.
In Vietnam, U.S. forces at their peak had up to three times as many troops at any one time as in Iraq and suffered 58,000 deaths, more than 13 times as many as have died in Iraq. There are two broad reasons for the added expense of the Iraq war: people and equipment.
The Iraq war is the second-longest modern war ever fought with an all-volunteer U.S. force, behind the smaller-scale effort in Afghanistan. Volunteer forces are more expensive because of the higher salaries and related costs needed to retain people.
Balance of article . . . .
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"I have not come to ask forgiveness
but to take responsibility."
by Aaron Hughes, IVAW, Labor Beat
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Click image to view video
On March 13-14 an important International Labor Conference was held in Erbil, Iraq, which is in the Kurdistan region. Along with the 200 delegates from Iraqi trade unions and international unions, attending was a delegation from the U.S., comprised of representatives of U.S. Labor Against the War, and 2 representatives from Iraq Veterans Against the War. Among those IVAW attending was Aaron Hughes, the subject of this 25 minute video. Aaron explains why he attended the Conference, and places his return to Iraq as an anti-war veteran in the context of a similar visit by Vietnam Veterans Against the War to North Vietnam. At the center of Aaron's experience in Erbil is his short speech to the delegation apologizing for his role in the US military in oppressing the people of Iraq. This video is a documenting of that speech and the reactions of the audience, as well as Aaron's anxiety about what the reactions would be. The work of the Conference is also summarized by Aaron, enhanced with footage from Iraq Peacetv in Japan and Aaron's own footage of the event. The experience of the Conference provides the basis of the IVAW delegate's re-dedication of their goal of war reparations for the people and workers of Iraq. To order a dvd, send $15 check to: Labor Beat 37 S. Ashland Chicago, IL 60607 Please indicate title "Aaron at Erbil" Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner. For info: www.laborbeat.org / mail@laborbeat.org / 312-226-3330. For other Labor Beat videos, visit Google Video or YouTube and search "Labor Beat".
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Photos: First International Labor Conference
in Iraq, March 13-14, 2009
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View Slide Show
Photo credits: Michael Eisenscher, Aaron Hughes and Osamu Kimura
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April 15, 2009
Royal Dutch Shell is talking to two of China's biggest state-owned oil companies with a view to pursuing a joint venture in Iraq. Although Shell would not confirm details of the talks, a possible tie-up with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec) is reported to focus on a bid to develop the Kirkuk field in the north of the country. "Discussions with potential partners are at a very early stage," a spokesman for Shell said yesterday.
The putative deal is just the latest move as both international oil companies and their state-owned counterparts jostle for position in the vast and underdeveloped Iraqi oil market.
The prize is huge. The country has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels, the third largest in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran. "Iraq is a jewel for the international oil companies and always has been," said Manouchehr Takin, a senior petroleum analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. "Not only does it have large proven reserves but there are also big estimates for undiscovered resources. People agree or disagree on the detail, but many think there may be even more yet to be found."
Balance of article . . . .
Rethinking Afghanistan
The Cost of Occupation
by Robert Greenwald, Director, Brave New Foundation
April 15th, 2009
Click image to view video
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April 16, 2009 8:28 pm
Tomgram: William Astore, Déjà Vu All Over Again in Afghanistan
It didn't take long. Only 11 days after Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, a Newsweek cover story proclaimed the Afghan War "Obama's Vietnam." And there wasn't even a question mark. As John Barry and Evan Thomas wrote grimly in that January piece, "[T]here is this stark similarity: in Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, we may now be facing a situation where we can win every battle and still not win the war -- at least not within a time frame and at a cost that is acceptable to the American people." In the two and a half months since that piece appeared, the President and his advisors have, in fact, doubled-down on what is increasingly the Af-Pak War -- with the expanding fighting in Pakistan's tribal borderlands helping to destabilize that regional nuclear power. As a result, it would hardly be surprising if "Obama's Vietnam" became an ever more common refrain in the year ahead.
In a number of ways, however, the Af-Pak War couldn't bear less of a relationship to the Vietnam one. After all, this time around there is no superpower enemy like the Soviet Union or regional power like China supporting and arming the Taliban (or, for that matter, like the United States, which supported and armed the mujahideen to give the Soviets their own "Vietnam" in Afghanistan in the 1980s). In Vietnam, the U.S. faced a North Vietnamese professional army, well-trained, superbly disciplined, and supplied with the best the Soviets and Chinese could produce, including heavy weapons; while the guerrilla organization we fought in South Vietnam, which Americans knew as "the Vietcong," had widespread popular support, was unified, dedicated, well structured, and highly regimented.
The "Taliban," on the other hand, is a rag-tag, under-armed set of largely localized militias adding up to only perhaps 10,000-15,000 armed fighters, loyal to a range of leaders, including the pre-2001 Taliban leadership headed by Mullah Omar, various former mujahideen commanders of the anti-Soviet War, or sometimes just local warlords. Even where firmly lodged itself, the Taliban's support in rural Afghanistan, as far as can be told from what opinion polls exist, is at best unenthusiastic, and based largely on its ability to bring some safety to rural areas the corrupt central government has no control over, and above all, on its ability to present itself as the only real opposition to a foreign military occupation of the country.
Balance of article . . . .
Are We Safe Yet?
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Source: For 2001 to 2008 from Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation,
armscontrolcenter.org; for 2009, the Budget includes $70 billion in "allowances" for GWOT; WRL estimates an additional $130 billion will be authorized for spending in 2009 and subsequent years, making the total authorized $200 billion. This graph shows Budget Authority, while the pie on the front is Outlays.
Learn More . . . .
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