Three Trillion Dollar War

Suicide bombings in Iraq continue to target civilians

Linda — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:47:50 +0000

In the run-up to March 7th elections, a string of suicide bombings across Iraq have continued to target civilians and cause widespread disruptions. Yesterday’s terrible bombing killed dozens of civilians including blowing up a hospital where victims were being treated.

Since August, a series of large-scale bombings aimed at government buildings have killed several hundred people and shaken confidence in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s security services, following the withdrawal of most U.S. combat forces from major Iraqi cities last summer.

The number of Iraqis killed in February was twice as high as in January and 40% higher than a year earlier. The ongoing violence deters many of the 2 million Iraqi refugees — many of them middle class professionals now living in Syria — from returning to Iraq.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/03/03/iraq.violence/index.html

Contractor waste, poor performance, threatens Afghan police

Linda — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:33:55 +0000

The local police are a critical factor in holding onto any gains made during the current US/NATO operations in Afghanistan. Due to waste and ineffective efforts by the contractors hired to train and recruit Afghans to the police force, it is not clear whether they will be able to do this job. READ BELOW:

This does not bode well for costs either. The US has pledged to train and pay another 100,000 Afghan police as well as 100,000 Afghan troops, and this is likely to cost another $15 billion per year.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-18/keeping-the-taliban-down/p/

Obama requests $192 billion for wars

Linda — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:01:31 +0000

The President’s budget requests $192 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year and a half, including $160 billion for the next year. While $13.3 billion per month is a staggering figure in itself, it does not include:

Funding for veterans medical care, veterans disability compensation, and job training, housing and reintegration programs for veterans
Other costs buried in the defense budget, such as medical costs of military hospitals, senior Pentagon management time and attention, concurrent receipt of benefits, base salaries and equipment depreciation
Interest on the debt used to finance the war
Economic costs, such as loss of life, quality of life impairment, impact on family members, dislocation and long-term mental health disabilities

SIGIR audit cites waste in $2.5 billion DynCorps contract

Linda — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:16:50 +0000

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) this week issued an audit of a $2.5 billion State Department contract with DynCorp International for training Iraq’ police. The report finds that the State department failed to oversee the contract properly, due to a shortage of staff to oversee work done by contractors. The SIGIR discovered that there was ONE single conractor officer to monitor invoices for the $2.5 billion contract –who was approving all invoices without questioning them. (There are now 3 contracting officers overseeing the contract).

The result: waste. For example, the Department paid more than $4 million per year to assign a 16-person security detail to protect 6 US contractors in Iraq who already had a whole team of hired guards.

Read report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-008.pdf

SIGIR finds money for democracy-building in Iraq is misspent

Linda — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 03:49:16 +0000

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), issued a new report today looking at the use of grant funds given to the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. The majority of the $250 million over five years in grants was supposed to help in building democracy, but instead it was largely spent on security and overhead costs.

Only 41 percent of the $114 million in the 7 DRL grants reviewed by SIGIR (there were 12 total) actually went to the programs. IRI’s money went heavily to security (57.2%) with about 7% on overhead; while NDI spent about one-third on security (32.7%) but more on indirect overhead costs (17%).

Read the report: http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/10-012.pdf

26% increase in suicide rate among male Iraq/Afghan veterans

Linda — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:09:49 +0000

Another cost of the war continues in the form of rising suicide rates among veterans. Despite massive intervention by the military and the VA, including a number of new programs and studies to prevent suicide among returning vets, the rate between 2005 -2007 has risen by 26%, to historic proportions, according to recent data released by the VA.

Our research shows that the economic value of a life lost is around $7 million — this, of course, does not count the tragedy of the loss to the individual and his or her family.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/va-says-suicide-rate-for-vets-jumped-26-from-2005-2007/1

Record rise in infant deformities in Fallujah

Linda — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 03:47:09 +0000

Another hidden cost of war — the tragic plight of infants in Fallujah.

Read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects

Iraq operation name changed from “Multinational Force-Iraq” to “US Forces-Iraq”

Linda — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:05:53 +0000

A ceremony was held at Camp Victory in Baghdad to mark the fact that the “coalition of the willing” is now entirely composed of US troops. Six months after the last remaining non-American coalition members (from the UK, Australia and Romania) pulled out of Iraq, the name of the operation was officially changed from “Multinational Force-Iraq” (MNF-1) to “US Forces-Iraq” (USF-1). The US currently has 110,000 troops in Iraq, which are scheduled to be reduced to 50,000 by August 2010.

Another milestone is that December 2009 was the first month since 2003 when US forces suffered no hostile fatalities (there were 3 non-combat fatalities). While we welcome this news, it is important to remember that 4371 Americans have already been killed in the unnecessary “war of choice” in Iraq to date, while more than $1 trillion dollars has been spent so far, and the final cost will reach $3 trillion. Meanwhile, nearly 4000 Iraqis have been killed in violent acts during 2009, and millions of Iraqis are still refugees, displaced in neighboring countries.

CNAS Paper criticizes role of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan

Linda — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:12:02 +0000

Contractors outnumber US troops in Afghanistan today, and for most of the Iraq war the number of contractors has vastly exceeded the number of American troops. As we have noted, these contractors perform a very wide range of functions – from repairing vehicles to cooking to interrogating the enemy. Despite our heavy reliance on this shadow army of contractors, it has received little scrutiny.

A new working paper from the respected Center for New American Security (CNAS) looks at many of the roles of U.S. contractors in theater, arguing that these contracts suffer from “insufficient oversight, inadequate integration into operational planning, and ambiguous legal status”. Read the study:

http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/ContractorConflicts_FontaineNagl_Dec2009_workingpaper_1.pdf

Looming Afghanistan War costs

Linda — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:39:45 +0000

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/opinion/breaking-views/44188-how-to-finance-the-war-in-afghanistan-