Every day, there is new evidence that the administration of George W. Bush had planned the Iraq war from the beginning, and fabricated premises for it when it could find none. But in reality, we do not need any new evidence. What we already know is more than enough. In fact, the War Crimes Tribunal prosecutes and convicts war criminals with much less evidence than what is available on Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and the rest of the Likudnik war gang in the administration that includes the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and others. A few days ago, I read detailed classified documents on the Iraq War, published by the (U.S.) National Security Archive in three parts, along with analysis and commentary by experts such as John Prados, who also wrote about the subject. In a nutshell, the documents show that within three days of entering the White House, the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was told that the administration's policy in Iraq is regime change. Then on 29/9/2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to start drafting war plans for Iraq, after which the military developed these plans regularly at the urging of the Defense Secretary. I know that the Arab (and Muslim) nation is in a state of clinical death. All that remains is for the plugs to be pulled from their life support system for the benefit of all. However, I cannot understand how a great country like the United States is not pursuing this issue, and I blame President Barack Obama who said: We look forward, not backward. Not only did the war criminals not appreciate this stance of his, but they also rebelled against him and held him responsible for what they themselves perpetrated against their country and the rest of the world. [The publication of] these documents on the war plans, which also include Britain's role, coincided with a full panel meeting of the House Veterans Affairs Committee at the U.S Congress entitled the “True Cost (expenses) of War.” 25 Representatives were absent from the meeting, and it seems that they are among those who supported the war and hence, they do not want to backtrack or be confronted with their mistakes. What are these expenses, then? Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize, and Linda Bilmes published a book in 2008 entitled “The Three Trillion Dollar War”. At the time, the book caused a lot of controversy, and I have mentioned it in this column. This time, however, they said that their estimates two years ago were low, and that the costs of caring for veterans alone rose from 717 billion dollars to 934 billion, or nearly one trillion dollars. Two years ago, they estimated the number of those who will apply for medical care to be 400 thousand, but by last March, the actual number was 565 thousand, and according to the figures of an expert on veteran affairs, the number is 620 thousand. Moreover, the two authors had estimated that between 366 and 398 thousand will claim for disability benefits; however, 518 thousand have since claimed for compensations, and again, there are other estimates that are much higher. I do not want to burden the reader with more of these figures that were presented during the panel meeting on the costs of the war, but I want to say that there was a consensus that if Stiglitz and Bilmes's book were to be republished, the title this time would have been "The Four to Six Trillion Dollar War". The review of the original book in Publishers Weekly had estimated the costs of the Iraq war at 4.5 trillion dollars, and if this figure were to be added to that of the Afghanistan war, the total cost would become seven trillion dollars. We may also add a few trillions in indirect, or hidden, costs to this figure, such as the loss of employment in the private sector, the expenses for medical care for permanent disabilities and mental health illnesses (including cases of insanity), and the losses incurred by families and the society at large. I also want to add other figures that the meeting of the House Veterans Affairs Committee did not discuss: In Iraq, around 4500 American soldiers in Iraq have been killed, while the number of Americans killed in Afghanistan recently exceeded 2000. We had quoted Western sources in the past – so that we would not be accused [of bias] - that the war caused the deaths of one million Iraqis. Today, we have British and American figures that put the number of Iraqi casualties at 1.3 million. What has been committed in Iraq is the worst crime since World War II, when the Nazis killed six million Jews. There is a difference between the two, in fact. The magnitude of the Holocaust was not exactly known until the last two years of the war, while the war crimes in Iraq have been recorded and documented since day one, crimes that have not stopped at any rate. This is all while the Arab and Islamic countries have failed to ask the UN Security Council to investigate these crimes; on the contrary, Iraq officially opposed Libya's request for such an investigation. Why is it difficult to understand that the Arabs and Muslims are being humiliated by others, when their conduct itself invites such humiliation upon them? I do not need an answer, because it lies within the question itself. [email protected]
