www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS...index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The total economic impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated at $1.6 trillion by 2009, a congressional committee said in a report released Tuesday.
That is nearly double the $804 billion in direct war costs that the White House already has requested so far from Congress, the Democratically-controlled Joint Economic Committee said.
The total war costs could grow to $3.5 trillion by 2017, the committee estimated.
The higher total economic impact comes from, among other things, the cost of borrowing money to pay for the war, the lost productivity due to that borrowing, higher oil prices, and the cost of taking care of wounded veterans, the committee said.
The committee calculated that the average cost of both wars for a family of four would be $20,900 from 2002 to 2008. The cost for a family of four would go up to $46,400 from 2002 to 2017, the committee said.
"For every dollar we spend directly in Iraq, we're going to pay another dollar for the indirect, but immediate, costs of the war," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said. "We of the baby boom generation and our children and grandchildren will be paying for this war for a very long time to come."
"We cannot afford this war -- $12 billion dollars a month?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said. "We just can't. We can't continue."
Schumer said finances will become an significant factor in the ongoing debate regarding the course of the conflicts.
"The cost of the war is becoming the $800-billion-dollar gorilla in the room when it comes to opposition in the war," he said. "It is becoming the first thing that people mention after the loss of life when they're opposed to this war."
"And the people who mention it, many of them, are not people who were against the war in the past," Schumer added.
Republicans, who said they were not included in the preparation of the report, said the country has little choice but continue to bear the costs of the war.
"What's their alternative?" Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, asked of the Democrats. "Should we not fund veterans? Should we not send MRAPs [armored personal carriers] to Iraq? Not fund the GI Bill?
"And how much will oil cost if the progress in Iraq is reversed and al Qaeda shuts down the oil deliveries? What will that do to the markets?" Stewart asked.
Stewart called the report "a Democrat report, prepared by the head of the Democrat campaign committee" -- a reference to Schumer, the head of the party's effort to add Senate seats in 2008.
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White House spokeswoman Dana Perino accused the Democrats of releasing the report for partisan reasons and to "muddy the waters" after a series of positive reports from Iraq -- including a reduction in violence, increased economic capacity of the country, and signs of continued political reconciliation "from the bottom up."
"It's positive and we hope it is a trend that will take hold," Perino said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol...461214.ece
September 16, 2007
Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil
Graham Paterson
Greenspan on the 'irresponsible' Bush
AMERICAs elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bushs economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil, he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddams support for terrorism.
...
President Bush is portrayed as irresponsible and incurious (who knew?). The former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve says that Mr Bush presided over intolerable increases in government spending. My biggest frustration remained the Presidents unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending.
He had hoped that his colleague from the Ford Administration, Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, would be a force for economic prudence and fiscal discipline. Instead, I was soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions.
Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the past ten years lost their way and swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.
[ The Washington Post focused on the charge in Greenspan's book that "the Iraq war is largely about oil."
The fiscal guru backed off that assertion by suggesting that while securing global oil supplies "was not the administration's motive," it should have been.
He said than when he made the argument that ousting Saddam Hussein was "essential" because of the threat he posed to U.S. oil interests in the region, White House officials told him "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil." ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
www.truthout.org/docs_03/060503A.shtml
Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil
By George Wright
The Guardian
..//..
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." ..//..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
thinkprogress.org/2007/10...s-station/
Of course its about oil, we cant really deny that, [ General ] Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk."
online.wsj.com/article/SB...lenews_wsj
U.S. Digs In to Guard Iraq Oil Exports
Long-Term Presence Planned
At Persian Gulf Terminals
Viewed as Vulnerable
By CHIP CUMMINS
November 12, 2007; Page A6
KHAWR AL AMAYA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq -- The U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf.
While presidential candidates debate whether to start bringing ground troops home from Iraq, the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry.
That is a sea change for the U.S., which has patrolled these waters for decades. In the past, American warships and their allies flexed the West's military might in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate a broad commitment to protect the region, which produces almost a third of the world's oil. President Jimmy Carter codified the doctrine in 1980 in response to a perceived Soviet threat.
Now, amid rising prices -- oil futures finished Friday at $96.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 86 cents -- and new vulnerabilities in the world's stretched oil-supply chain -- from militants in Nigeria to occasional Iranian threats to disrupt Persian Gulf shipping -- the Navy finds itself with an additional, much more specific role: playing security guard to Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure.
Iraq's two export terminals are an increasingly vulnerable link in that supply chain. If they are both working, they can load almost two million barrels a day, or about 2.4% of the world's daily oil needs. If the four tanker berths at Al Basra Oil Terminal, the better-working of the two, are occupied with loaded ships, the cargo would represent almost 10% of global demand.
"As a contributor to an increasingly inelastic supply, that is a significant percentage," says Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf. "That isn't just an Iraq issue, that's a global economic-stability issue."
The new installation will house U.S., British and Australian officers and sailors. The Pentagon has said it has no intention of building permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, and Navy officials say they intend to turn over the facility to Iraqi forces as soon as they can run it on their own.
But Iraqi forces are a long way from being able to take over the mission, Navy officials say. Iraqi patrol boats are on the water assisting in sector patrols around the terminals. But they are rusting hulks. Iraqi soldiers stationed on the terminals have just recently started training with live ammunition. "They are going to need help for years to come," Adm. Cosgriff says.
So for the time being, the new base will serve as a U.S.-controlled command post straddling a major component of Iraq's creaking oil industry. From a collection of modified shipping containers, coalition officers will monitor ship traffic and coordinate the movement of coalition warships circling "Kaaot" and "Abot," as the military has nicknamed the two terminals.
Right now, the two terminals don't look like much. They are riddled with holes from bullets and shells during fighting in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. A causeway connecting two sections of Kaaot collapsed in the spring, and a fire ravaged another section of the terminal last year. Despite the disrepair, they are arguably the most heavily guarded oil installations in the world.
These days, three U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol ships scoot around a mile or so off the terminals. An Iraqi boat is typically on station as well. They spend most of their day shooing away fishing boats and merchant traffic. A handful of much larger coalition warships cruise nearby.
A contingent of U.S. sailors lives on each of the two terminals to help provide close-in protection and to train Iraqi troops. A chain-link fence drapes over parts of the terminal to deter small craft or swimmers from getting to the terminal. U.S. and Iraqi forces narrowly thwarted an attack by explosives-laden speedboats in 2004.
Coalition staff, including an Australian commodore who currently has tactical control of the operation, have been previously stationed on the terminal, living aboard a rusty barge moored to Kaaot. Iraqi Marines man machine guns on each of the two terminals, and dozens of Iraqi employees, working shifts for Iraq's South Oil Co., operate the terminals for the Iraqi government.
Ashore, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad recently formed a special task force of American officials to coordinate U.S. policy regarding Iraqi energy-related issues, including security of oil infrastructure. U.S. forces don't guard any onshore installations, but Washington has committed some $277 million for energy-infrastructure protection.
Iraq's once-powerful oil industry is still a point of nationalistic pride among most Iraqis. Oil officials in Baghdad have mixed feelings about the U.S. presence atop one of their country's most important pieces of energy infrastructure.
Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, acknowledges the foreign navies' crucial role protecting the platforms. But he also complains about the delays that U.S.-led tanker inspections and security measures sometimes mean. "We have asked them not to influence the movement of vessels assigned to carry our crude oil to the buyers," he says.
The new outpost also offers a convenient perch from which to monitor Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Amid heightened rhetoric between Tehran and Washington over the past few years, some Iranian officials have threatened a disruption to shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The naval component of the Revolutionary Guards Corps operates from a partially submerged barge and crane visible on clear days from Kaaot. Iranian forces in the spring captured a contingent of British sailors who were participating in the oil-protection mission here and paraded them in front of cameras before letting them go.
Despite the incident, coalition officials say contact with their Iranian counterparts operating in the Gulf has been limited and mostly professional.
"We live with each other," says Lt. Brian Betz, commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Maui. "They stay on their side of the line, and we stay on our side."
Washington has also boosted its efforts to encourage more energy-security cooperation among allies in the Gulf.
Adm. Cosgriff says U.S. firepower won't solve all the region's energy-security fears. "You can go broke doing point defense for all the platforms out here," he says.
Quote:War costs could total $1.6 trillion by 2009, panel estimates
The committee calculated that the average cost of both wars for a family of four would be $20,900 from 2002 to 2008. The cost for a family of four would go up to $46,400 from 2002 to 2017, the committee said.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The total economic impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is estimated at $1.6 trillion by 2009, a congressional committee said in a report released Tuesday.
That is nearly double the $804 billion in direct war costs that the White House already has requested so far from Congress, the Democratically-controlled Joint Economic Committee said.
The total war costs could grow to $3.5 trillion by 2017, the committee estimated.
The higher total economic impact comes from, among other things, the cost of borrowing money to pay for the war, the lost productivity due to that borrowing, higher oil prices, and the cost of taking care of wounded veterans, the committee said.
The committee calculated that the average cost of both wars for a family of four would be $20,900 from 2002 to 2008. The cost for a family of four would go up to $46,400 from 2002 to 2017, the committee said.
"For every dollar we spend directly in Iraq, we're going to pay another dollar for the indirect, but immediate, costs of the war," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said. "We of the baby boom generation and our children and grandchildren will be paying for this war for a very long time to come."
"We cannot afford this war -- $12 billion dollars a month?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said. "We just can't. We can't continue."
Schumer said finances will become an significant factor in the ongoing debate regarding the course of the conflicts.
"The cost of the war is becoming the $800-billion-dollar gorilla in the room when it comes to opposition in the war," he said. "It is becoming the first thing that people mention after the loss of life when they're opposed to this war."
"And the people who mention it, many of them, are not people who were against the war in the past," Schumer added.
Republicans, who said they were not included in the preparation of the report, said the country has little choice but continue to bear the costs of the war.
"What's their alternative?" Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, asked of the Democrats. "Should we not fund veterans? Should we not send MRAPs [armored personal carriers] to Iraq? Not fund the GI Bill?
"And how much will oil cost if the progress in Iraq is reversed and al Qaeda shuts down the oil deliveries? What will that do to the markets?" Stewart asked.
Stewart called the report "a Democrat report, prepared by the head of the Democrat campaign committee" -- a reference to Schumer, the head of the party's effort to add Senate seats in 2008.
advertisement
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino accused the Democrats of releasing the report for partisan reasons and to "muddy the waters" after a series of positive reports from Iraq -- including a reduction in violence, increased economic capacity of the country, and signs of continued political reconciliation "from the bottom up."
"It's positive and we hope it is a trend that will take hold," Perino said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol...461214.ece
September 16, 2007
Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil
Graham Paterson
Greenspan on the 'irresponsible' Bush
AMERICAs elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bushs economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil, he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddams support for terrorism.
...
President Bush is portrayed as irresponsible and incurious (who knew?). The former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve says that Mr Bush presided over intolerable increases in government spending. My biggest frustration remained the Presidents unwillingness to wield his veto against out-of-control spending.
He had hoped that his colleague from the Ford Administration, Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, would be a force for economic prudence and fiscal discipline. Instead, I was soon to see my old friends veer off to unexpected directions.
Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the past ten years lost their way and swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.
[ The Washington Post focused on the charge in Greenspan's book that "the Iraq war is largely about oil."
The fiscal guru backed off that assertion by suggesting that while securing global oil supplies "was not the administration's motive," it should have been.
He said than when he made the argument that ousting Saddam Hussein was "essential" because of the threat he posed to U.S. oil interests in the region, White House officials told him "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil." ]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
www.truthout.org/docs_03/060503A.shtml
Wolfowitz: Iraq War Was About Oil
By George Wright
The Guardian
..//..
The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz - who has already undermined Tony Blair's position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a "bureaucratic" excuse for war - has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is "swimming" in oil.
The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defense minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." ..//..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
thinkprogress.org/2007/10...s-station/
Of course its about oil, we cant really deny that, [ General ] Abizaid said of the Iraq campaign early on in the talk."
Quote:
SYDNEY, Nov. 13 [ 2007 ] Hans Blix, the former head of the Iraq weapons search, is the latest to say oil may be a factor in the war in Iraq.
"One fear I would have is that the U.S. has a hidden thought to remain in Iraq," Blix, the former chief of the U.N. inspection team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, told Australia's ABC radio.
Blix was in Australia accepting the Sydney Peace Prize.
"One reason why they wanted in was that they felt they must leave Saudi Arabia. After the Gulf War in 1991, they left their troops in Saudi Arabia to protect pipelines," he said. "And when they felt they could no longer stay in Saudi Arabia, Iraq was the next best place because it was more secularized than Saudi Arabia and had the second biggest oil reserves in the region."
online.wsj.com/article/SB...lenews_wsj
U.S. Digs In to Guard Iraq Oil Exports
Long-Term Presence Planned
At Persian Gulf Terminals
Viewed as Vulnerable
By CHIP CUMMINS
November 12, 2007; Page A6
KHAWR AL AMAYA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq -- The U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf.
While presidential candidates debate whether to start bringing ground troops home from Iraq, the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry.
That is a sea change for the U.S., which has patrolled these waters for decades. In the past, American warships and their allies flexed the West's military might in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate a broad commitment to protect the region, which produces almost a third of the world's oil. President Jimmy Carter codified the doctrine in 1980 in response to a perceived Soviet threat.
Now, amid rising prices -- oil futures finished Friday at $96.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 86 cents -- and new vulnerabilities in the world's stretched oil-supply chain -- from militants in Nigeria to occasional Iranian threats to disrupt Persian Gulf shipping -- the Navy finds itself with an additional, much more specific role: playing security guard to Iraq's offshore oil infrastructure.
Iraq's two export terminals are an increasingly vulnerable link in that supply chain. If they are both working, they can load almost two million barrels a day, or about 2.4% of the world's daily oil needs. If the four tanker berths at Al Basra Oil Terminal, the better-working of the two, are occupied with loaded ships, the cargo would represent almost 10% of global demand.
"As a contributor to an increasingly inelastic supply, that is a significant percentage," says Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf. "That isn't just an Iraq issue, that's a global economic-stability issue."
The new installation will house U.S., British and Australian officers and sailors. The Pentagon has said it has no intention of building permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, and Navy officials say they intend to turn over the facility to Iraqi forces as soon as they can run it on their own.
But Iraqi forces are a long way from being able to take over the mission, Navy officials say. Iraqi patrol boats are on the water assisting in sector patrols around the terminals. But they are rusting hulks. Iraqi soldiers stationed on the terminals have just recently started training with live ammunition. "They are going to need help for years to come," Adm. Cosgriff says.
So for the time being, the new base will serve as a U.S.-controlled command post straddling a major component of Iraq's creaking oil industry. From a collection of modified shipping containers, coalition officers will monitor ship traffic and coordinate the movement of coalition warships circling "Kaaot" and "Abot," as the military has nicknamed the two terminals.
Right now, the two terminals don't look like much. They are riddled with holes from bullets and shells during fighting in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. A causeway connecting two sections of Kaaot collapsed in the spring, and a fire ravaged another section of the terminal last year. Despite the disrepair, they are arguably the most heavily guarded oil installations in the world.
These days, three U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrol ships scoot around a mile or so off the terminals. An Iraqi boat is typically on station as well. They spend most of their day shooing away fishing boats and merchant traffic. A handful of much larger coalition warships cruise nearby.
A contingent of U.S. sailors lives on each of the two terminals to help provide close-in protection and to train Iraqi troops. A chain-link fence drapes over parts of the terminal to deter small craft or swimmers from getting to the terminal. U.S. and Iraqi forces narrowly thwarted an attack by explosives-laden speedboats in 2004.
Coalition staff, including an Australian commodore who currently has tactical control of the operation, have been previously stationed on the terminal, living aboard a rusty barge moored to Kaaot. Iraqi Marines man machine guns on each of the two terminals, and dozens of Iraqi employees, working shifts for Iraq's South Oil Co., operate the terminals for the Iraqi government.
Ashore, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad recently formed a special task force of American officials to coordinate U.S. policy regarding Iraqi energy-related issues, including security of oil infrastructure. U.S. forces don't guard any onshore installations, but Washington has committed some $277 million for energy-infrastructure protection.
Iraq's once-powerful oil industry is still a point of nationalistic pride among most Iraqis. Oil officials in Baghdad have mixed feelings about the U.S. presence atop one of their country's most important pieces of energy infrastructure.
Hussein al-Shahristani, Iraq's oil minister, acknowledges the foreign navies' crucial role protecting the platforms. But he also complains about the delays that U.S.-led tanker inspections and security measures sometimes mean. "We have asked them not to influence the movement of vessels assigned to carry our crude oil to the buyers," he says.
The new outpost also offers a convenient perch from which to monitor Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Amid heightened rhetoric between Tehran and Washington over the past few years, some Iranian officials have threatened a disruption to shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The naval component of the Revolutionary Guards Corps operates from a partially submerged barge and crane visible on clear days from Kaaot. Iranian forces in the spring captured a contingent of British sailors who were participating in the oil-protection mission here and paraded them in front of cameras before letting them go.
Despite the incident, coalition officials say contact with their Iranian counterparts operating in the Gulf has been limited and mostly professional.
"We live with each other," says Lt. Brian Betz, commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Maui. "They stay on their side of the line, and we stay on our side."
Washington has also boosted its efforts to encourage more energy-security cooperation among allies in the Gulf.
Adm. Cosgriff says U.S. firepower won't solve all the region's energy-security fears. "You can go broke doing point defense for all the platforms out here," he says.
Quote:
www.wsws.org/articles/200...-n13.shtml
US, British and Australian forces build oil-protection base in Iraq
By Patrick Martin
13 November 2007
The US Navy, with the assistance of British and Australian commandos, is building a permanent base to guard two oil-export platforms in Iraqi waters at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, according to a report Monday in the Wall Street Journal.
Troops from all three occupying countries are now stationed at the Khawr al Amaya oil terminal, protecting it and the neighboring Al Basrah oil terminal, facilities critical for any significant expansion of tanker shipments of Iraqi oil to the world market..
..//..
The British sailors captured earlier this year by Iranian forces were among those participating in the oil-protection missiona fact that was suppressed in the media accounts at the time. That incident ended when the British prisoners made statements admitting they had crossed into Iranian waters and then were sent home. A similar episode involving American soldiers could well provide a pretext for a full-scale US military strike against Iran.
The oil-terminal operation is only one part of a much larger program, costing an estimated $277 million, in which US forces are deployed to protect Iraqi oilfields. The terminal facilities are the only ones where US military personnel are actually stationed inside production or shipping installations. ..//..
Quote:
The Kurdistan regional government announced another round of production-sharing contracts, including one with Reliance Industries, an Indian firm, which paid a signing bonus of $15.5 million to $17.5 million for exploration contracts for two sites in the Kurdish-ruled provinces in the north of Iraq.
The federal Iraqi government has denounced the Kurdish deals as violations of national sovereignty.
