Via The Australian:

Iraq war 'caused slowdown in the US'

Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent | February 28, 2008

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003.

Australia also faced a real bill much greater than the $2.2billion in military spending reported last week by Australian Defence Force chief Angus Houston, Professor Stiglitz said, pointing to higher oil prices and other indirect costs of the wars.

Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.

The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he said.

That led to a housing bubble and a consumption boom, and the fallout was plunging the US economy into recession and saddling the next US president with the biggest budget deficit in history, he said.

Professor Stiglitz, an academic at the Columbia Business School and a former economic adviser to president Bill Clinton, said a further $US500 billion was going to be spent on the fighting in the next two years and that could have been used more effectively to improve the security and quality of life of Americans and the rest of the world.

The money being spent on the war each week would be enough to wipe out illiteracy around the world, he said.

Just a few days' funding would be enough to provide health insurance for US children who were not covered, he said.

The public had been encouraged by the White House to ignore the costs of the war because of the belief that the war would somehow pay for itself or be paid for by Iraqi oil or US allies.

"When the Bush administration went to war in Iraq it obviously didn't focus very much on the cost. Larry Lindsey, the chief economic adviser, said the cost was going to be between $US100billion and $US200 billion - and for that slight moment of quasi-honesty he was fired.

"(Then defence secretary Donald) Rumsfeld responded and said 'baloney', and the number the administration came up with was $US50 to $US60 billion. We have calculated that the cost was more like $US3 trillion.

"Three trillion is a very conservative number, the true costs are likely to be much larger than that."

Five years after the war, the US was still spending about $US50billion every three months on direct military costs, he said.

Professor Stiglitz and another Clinton administration economist, Linda Bilmes, have produced a book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, pulling together their research on the true cost of the war, which does not include the cost to Iraq.

One of the greatest discrepancies is that the official figures do not include the long-term healthcare and social benefits for injured servicemen, who are surviving previously fatal attacks because of improved body armour.

"The ratio of injuries to fatalities in a normal war is 2:1. In this war they admitted to 7:1 but a true number is (something) like 15:1."

Some 100,000 servicemen have been diagnosed with serious psychological problems and the soldiers doing the most tours of duty have not yet returned.

Professor Stiglitz attributed to the Iraq war $US5-$US10 of the almost $US80-a-barrel increase in oil prices since the start of the war, adding that it would have been reasonable to attribute more than $US35 of that rise to the war.

He said the British bill for its role in the war was about 20 times the pound stg. 1billion ($2.1 billion) that former prime minister Tony Blair estimated before the war.

The British Government was yesterday ordered to release details of its planning for the war, when the country's Information Commissioner backed a Freedom of Information request for the minutes of two cabinet meetings in the days before the war.

Commissioner Richard Thomas said that because of the importance of the decision to go to war, the public interest in disclosing the minutes outweighed the public interest in withholding the information.

My favorite movie of the year was the one about the heartless con man who's obsessed with finding oil.

Its called No End In Sight. 

-- Bill Maher

If the nation's top law-enforcement official and top intelligence official admit that President Bush broke the law, why can't we impeach him?
______________________________________________________________

Saturday February 23, 2008 08:46 EST

McConnell/Mukasey: Eavesdropping outside of FISA is "illegal"

(updated below)

The White House yesterday escalated its most brazen, Orwellian campaign of the last eight years -- shrilly accusing House Democrats of jeopardizing the nation's security by allowing the Protect America Act to expire even though it's the President and House Republicans who blocked any extensions of that law. As the Associated Press pointed out at the bottom of its story:

McConnell acknowledged last week that the White House's refusal to extend the wiretapping law was meant to pressure Congress to pass the Senate bill.

Ponder what it says about our press corps that the White House knows it can (a) block all attempts to extend the PAA and then (b) spend the next several weeks blaming Democrats for helping the Terrorists by allowing the PAA to expire. I know I've made that point before, but this one is so brazen, so transparent and audacious, that it just hasn't yet ceased to amaze.

In any event, the two honorable, apolitical, completely trustworthy Bush cabinet members -- DNI Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- yesterday released a letter addressed to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes which is basically a written adaptation of the scary 24 video produced this week by the House Republicans, breathlessly claiming that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because of the PAA's expiration.

The letter contains the now-standard fear-mongering claims that telecoms will stop cooperating (and even have stopped cooperating already) with government surveillance in the absence of the PAA (an absence caused single-handedly by the President) -- i.e., "we have lost intelligence information this past week," etc. But there was one passage in the letter which seems significant and worth highlighting.

In the letter from Chairman Reyes to which McConnell and Mukasey are responding, Reyes pointed out that under the still-existing FISA law, the Government is free to commence surveillance without a warrant where there is no time to obtain one. In response, McConnell and Mukasey wrote:

[You imply that the emergency authorization process under FISA is an adequate substitute for the legislative authorities that have elapsed. This assertion reflects a basic misunderstanding about FISA's emergency authorization provisions. Specifically, you assert that the National Security Agency (NSA) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) "may begin surveillance immediately" in an emergency situation. FISA requires far more, and it would be illegal to proceed as you suggest].

Wow, what a blockbuster revelation. Apparently, as it turns out, in the United States it's "illegal" for the Government to eavesdrop on Americans without first complying with the requirements of FISA. Who would have known? It's a good thing we don't have a Government that would ever do that, or a Congress that would ever tolerate such "illegal" behavior. And it's so moving to hear the Bush administration earnestly explain that they are so hamstrung by FISA's requirements that we are all deeply vulnerable to the Terrorists, but they have no choice but to comply with its burdensome provisions -- because to do otherwise would be "illegal."

According to Bush's Attorney General and DNI, then, this is what is called "illegal" behavior:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 -- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said.

So, you see, the Bush administration is in a really tough bind here, because they would really like to eavesdrop outside of FISA because they want to protect us all and keep us safe, but they just can't do that, because eavesdropping without complying with FISA's requirements is "illegal," and that's something they would never, ever do.

UPDATE: The claim in the Mukasey/McConnell letter that telecoms aren't cooperating now turns out to be completely untrue since, as The Washington Post reports, "administration officials told lawmakers that the final holdout among the companies had relented and agreed to fully participate in the surveillance program."

But even if telecoms were refusing to cooperate, the reason for their refusal was not because they don't have retroactive immunity, but rather, it's because there is alleged uncertainty over the legality of current surveillance requests, and uncertainty over the ongoing validity of the prospective immunity provided by the PAA, because the PAA expired. If the PAA had been extended, they would be completely protected with prospective immunity for future surveillance cooperation. And, of course, the PAA would not have expired had Congressional Democrats had their way -- they wanted to extend it until they could agree to a new bill. Thus, any alleged refusal on the part of telecoms to cooperate is exclusively the fault of Bush and House Republicans for forcing expiration of the PAA. That's just true as a matter of basic logic.

But leave all of that aside for a moment. Since Mike Mukasey himself just said in this letter that spying outside of FISA is "illegal," and since it's indisputable that the Bush administration did just that for years, doesn't that compel him as Attorney General to commence a criminal investigation into this "illegal" conduct?

UPDATE II: C&L has produced an excellent video response to the House Republicans' 24-copying, "Give-us-what-we-want-or-die" video from earlier this week. And, as I've linked to before, this animated video on telecom amnesty and FISA by Mark Fiore is basically perfect:

UPDATE III: This might be the best GOP FISA quote yet, from Sean Conway, the chief of staff for Colorado Republican U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard (h/t Zappatero):

And the House has just simply said, we're not going to accept this, because we want to have, you know, terrorists be able to sue phone companies if they're listening to our conversations. It's insane.

The most difficult job in America -- it's really impossible -- is satirizing Republican exploitation of Terrorism. No matter how far the satire goes, the actual fear-mongerers always easily surpass it. House Democrats want Terrorists to be able to sue the phone companies. That's what this is about.

Conway also beat his chest and said this:

I don't know about you, but if I'm a Democrat out there, you'd best, better hope that something does not happen in this country while this bill lapses.

Republicans like Conway are so eager for a Terrorist attack to happen that you can almost hear them drooling in anticipation over the political gain they imagine they'll be able to squeeze from it.

-- Glenn Greenwald

For all President Bush's high-minded talk of spreading democracy abroad, which is necessary-- according to his reading of scripture, is because "freedom is a gift from an Almighty to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth"-- he certainly has a novel interpretation of exactly what this supposedly sacrosanct gift of the Divine means:

Exclusive: U.S. urges Pakistanis to keep Musharraf, despite election defeat

By Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers 

Wed Feb 20, 6:45 PM ET

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department , with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

"This is dangerous," said the diplomat.

The officials spoke to McClatchy on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss internal government debates.

The effort to persuade Pakistan's newly elected parliament not to reinstate the judges could be perceived in Pakistan as a U.S. attempt to keep Musharraf in power after voters overwhelmingly rejected his Pakistan Muslim League-Q political party.

"There is going to be an uprising against the people who were elected" should opposition parties agree to the plan, warned Athar Minallah, the lawyer of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry , whom Musharraf has under house arrest.

A close aide to Nawaz Sharif, whose Pakistan Muslim League-N party won the second highest number of seats in the 342-seat National Assembly, said the former prime minister is under growing Western pressure to drop his demands for Musharraf's immediate resignation and the reinstatement of Chaudhry.

"The suggestion has been there from Western countries for some time," said the aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We are not willing to compromise on our stance. It would be against the interests of the Pakistani people."

There may also be personal reasons for Sharif's demands: He was ousted as prime minister when Musharraf led a 1999 coup against him.

The Bush administration has long praised Musharraf as an "indispensable" ally against al Qaida and Islamic radicals waging a guerrilla war and suicide bombing campaign from the tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Bush, traveling in Africa, on Wednesday expressed appreciation for Musharraf.

"It's now time for the newly elected folks to show up and form their government, and the question then is, will they be friends of the United States , and I certainly hope so," he said at a news conference in Ghana .

But many Pakistanis consider Musharraf a U.S. puppet for stepping up counter-insurgency operations in the tribal areas that have claimed the lives of women and children.

Experts cite that cooperation as a key reason for the devastating losses suffered by Musharraf's political allies, who retained only 38 of 132 National Assembly seats.

The party backed Musharraf's ouster of Chief Justice Chaudhry , the arrests of thousands of critics, the muzzling of the independent press and a state of emergency last year.

Amazing, really.  The man who has made "spreading democracy" the supposed cornerstone of his foreign policy is urging the government and people of Pakistan to, for all intents and purposes, ignore the results of the election they just had, and keep the dictator-- who they just ousted with overwhelming numbers-- in power.

Need anyone anymore evidence to prove to them that Bush's claims of wanting to foster "democracy" and "liberty" overseas-- especially in middle-eastern and Muslim countries-- are as credible as his warnings of Iraqi chemical weapons-armed drones, yellowcake from Niger, or mushroom cloud-shaped smoking guns?  Indeed, the fact that the President claimed "fostering the spread of democracy" in the Middle East as yet another justification for the Iraq war-- even though his own State Department warned before the invasion that this was a fantasy-- should have been all we needed to know about his so-called commitment to democracy.

In his victory speech tonight, John McCain immediately attacked Barack Obama on several fronts, including the old "empty calls for change", and the "he's too inexperienced" arguments that are fast becoming standards. 

But one criticism McCain used to illustrate Obama's supposed "inexperience" jumped out at me:

"he said he'd bomb our ally Pakistan". 

Now, of course McCain is purposefully misrepresenting Obama's remarks about Pakistan, which actually went something like: "if we have actionable intelligence on Bin Laden's location in Pakistan and the government of Pakistan will not attack him, I will take unilateral action."

I expect this sort of deceptive crap from the Republicans-- even John McCain.  But to make that accusation against Obama when the Washington Post is reporting that his pal President Bush days ago conducted exactly such a U.S. military strike into Pakistan is just baffling to me.

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

So Obama has publicly voiced the willingness to take unilateral action to take out an Al Qaeda leader.  George W. Bush just proved his willingness to.  Are we to believe that a President McCain wouldn't have done the same?

From ThinkProgress:

Last week, President Bush submitted his $515.4 billion defense spending budget for FY ‘09. Contained within that budget is a windfall for defense contractors — “$104.2 billion for weapons procurement and nearly $80 billion for research and development.” This budget is 7.5 percent higher than the current year’s.

Even Defense experts are surprised at how generous the Bush administration is willing to be with the taxpayers’ money, in light of a faltering economy and deep cuts to domestic programs:

“The expectation has been that it can’t continue to increase as it has,” Phil Finnegan, a defense analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, said of defense spending. “But it has surprised everyone to see how long this increase has continued. This budget was a great budget for all defense contractors.” […]

“The fiscal year 2009 budget may be about as good as it gets for defense contractors,” said Steve Kosiak, vice president of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “We have had eight years of quite dramatic growth in [the Defense Department’s] weapons acquisition accounts. Whoever the next president is, it is unlikely that we are going to continue a major buildup.

The administration may get its way on many of these spending requests. The military has dispatched “legions of lobbyists and defense contractors” to Capitol Hill to push for approval. Several lawmakers are actually asking for spending above what the administration requested. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and James Inhofe (R-OK), for example, are lobbying for F-22 fighter planes, even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has deemed more of these useless planes unnecessary.

A 2007 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found that between 2000 and 2005, procurement was the “fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending.” Non-competitive and sole-source contractors rose “by 115% from $67.5 billion in 2000 to $145 billion in 2005.”

The biggest beneficiary of the Bush administration’s generosity toward contractors? Halliburton.

A weakened military that is unprepared for contingencies.  Thanks Mr. Bush.

AP News Alert

Staff
AP News

Feb 08, 2008 3:29 PST

WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Associated Press has learned that a classfied Pentagon assessment has concluded that prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have prevented the military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis.

As Drudge would say: "Developing..."

UPDATE: Here's the full AP story:

Pentagon: War strains U.S. military's capabilities

Admiral: Risk to capabilities remains significant, 15-month tours too long

The Associated Press

updated 4:08 p.m. PT, Fri., Feb. 8, 2008

WASHINGTON - A classified Pentagon assessment concludes that long battlefield tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with persistent terrorist activity and other threats, have prevented the U.S. military from improving its ability to respond to any new crisis, The Associated Press has learned.

Despite security gains in Iraq, the military was not able to reduce the response risk level, which was raised from moderate to significant last year, according to the report.

The Pentagon will say that efforts to increase the size of the military, replace equipment and bolster partnerships overseas will help lower the risk over time, defense officials said Friday. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified report.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has completed the risk assessment, and it is expected to be delivered to Congress in mid-February. Because he has concluded the risk is significant, his report also will include a letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlining the steps the Pentagon is taking to reduce it.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace increased the risk level from moderate to significant last year.

Mullen: 15-month tours too long
In Congress this week, Mullen provided a glimpse into his thinking on the review. On Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed that the assessment is finished and acknowledged some of the factors Gates will cite in his letter.

"The risk has basically stayed consistent, stayed steady," Mullen told the House Armed Services Committee. "It is significant."

He said the 15-month tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are too long and must be reduced to 12 months, with longer rest periods at home. "We continue to build risk with respect to that," he said.

Other key national security challenges include threats from countries that possess weapons of mass destruction, as well as the need to replace equipment worn out and destroyed during more than six years of war.

On a positive note, Mullen pointed to security gains in Iraq, brought on in part by the increase in U.S. forces ordered there by President Bush last year. There, "the threat has receded and al-Qaida ... is on the run," he said. "We've reduced risk there. We've got more stability there as an example."

The annual review grades the military's ability to meet the demands of the nation's military strategy — which would include fighting the wars as well as being able to respond to any potential outbreaks in places such as North Korea, Iran, Lebanon or China.

The latest review by Mullen covers the military's status during 2007, but the readiness level has seesawed back and forth during the Iraq war. For example, the risk for 2004 was assessed as significant, but it improved to moderate in 2005 and 2006.

Last year, when Pace increased the risk level, a report from Gates accompanying the assessment warned that while the military is working to improve its warfighting capabilities, it "may take several years to reduce risk to acceptable levels."

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

To quote that sappy simplistic jingoistic pro-iraq war country music song from a few years back:

"Have You Forgotten?"

Bin Laden: Goal is to bankrupt U.S.

Al-Jazeera releases full transcript of al Qaeda leader's tape

Tuesday, November 2, 2004 Posted: 0107 GMT (0907 HKT)

Osama bin Laden delivers a videotaped message broadcast on Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera.

(CNN) -- The Arabic-language network Al-Jazeera released a full transcript Monday of the most recent videotape from Osama bin Laden in which the head of al Qaeda said his group's goal is to force America into bankruptcy.

Al-Jazeera aired portions of the videotape Friday but released the full transcript of the entire tape on its Web site Monday.

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah," bin Laden said in the transcript.

Let's see here-- where do we find ourselves today?

• 4 Trillion Dollars deeper in debt since 2001. 

• With a budget deficit of hundreds of Billions of Dollars (after being left a 200 Billion + surplus in 2001). 

• In a war in Iraq that will cost at least a Trillion dollars-- likely twice that. 

• With a dollar who's value is crashing.

• With a barrel of oil that costs almost 4 times as much as it did in 2001.

• In a housing market in which ten's of thousands of Americans are losing their homes.

• In a financial situation where American banks are relying on foreign governments (from the Middle East no less!) to bail them out of Billions of dollars in losses.

• In a country that is slipping into a consumer-driven recession.

I looks like Osama bin Laden may be getting his wish.  Ironically, this is the very video-- released right before the 2004 Presidential Election-- that many (including the CIA) credit with helping re-elect Mister Bush to a second term, thus allowing him to continue to achieve bin Laden's stated goal.

The number of false statements made by President Bush and his top officials about the threat from Iraq in the two years following 9/11.  A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found that Bush “led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.”

Almost a thousand separate misrepresentations, baseless assertions, uses of cherry-picked data, and outright lies. 

Nearly 5 years later, all we have to show for it is more terrorists, less allies, trillions in additional debt, 4000 American kids and at least 150,000 Iraqis dead, an emboldened Iran, a resurgent Taliban and Al Qaeda, and no good options going forward.