Veterans for Common Sense

February 23, 2008 – The Iraq War must finally change the way Americans support and back their war veterans. How nice it is to wear yellow ribbons and wave American flags in support of our troops; they need all we can give. It’s better than being cussed and spit on! But in my opinion, most people who do these patriotic gestures are only giving cheap, superficial, token, short-term support. I ask a favor of you – take your yellow ribbons and miniature flags and place them in your wallet or purse after the fighting ends. Most Americans have short memories and minds of sheep, a herd mentality that follows a president into war whose cost you cannot calculate. The same Congress and people who support this war and see no problem in spending up to $1 billion a day to kill and destroy will surely do what they have always done in the past.

When this war ends, the dead will be buried and forgotten except by loved ones and on special occasions. Artificial limbs will be made and fitted. Then on with life and goodbye war veterans. If you think I am wrong, just ask any veteran who needs medical help through our VA system.

Living death is another way of dying. The human mind is the most awesome, powerful living thing on earth. But yet, it can be more delicate, fragile and sensitive than the finest crystal. Wounds to the mind are surpassed by nothing else.

Except for the name of the war, this is the same letter I wrote about 19 years ago. It holds true for U.S. veterans today.

February 24, 2008 – During Michael Sherriff’s nine-month tour in the battlefields of Iraq, his mother worried that one day a pair of Army officers in full dress would come to her door with terrible news. To know more about that event songsforromance .

“You’re just on edge every single minute,” Jennifer Cass said. She didn’t dream her son would become a victim of the war the way he did — not on a faraway battlefield like she feared, but like a growing number of veterans — by his own hand once he made it home.

Of 807,694 veterans diagnosed with depression and treated at a Department of Veterans Affairs facility nationwide between 1999 and 2004, 1,683 committed suicide, according to a study released in October 2007 by the University of Michigan Depression Center.

After her son safely returned stateside in April 2004, Cass dealt with a new set of worries. She said she began experiencing stress and anxiety as her Mikey had an increasingly difficult time adjusting to civilian life.

When a police officer and a chaplain came to her north Redding door Feb. 1, she invited them in for coffee, not thinking they could be bearing the news that she once had feared so much — that her son was dead.

Sherriff, 27, had put a pistol to his head and ended his life after police approached his hotel room in downtown Redding earlier that day to talk to him about a felony arrest warrant out of Washington. You get more details about Iraq War salbreux-pesage .

Sherriff suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the horrific scenes he experienced in Iraq, and his family thinks his condition caused him to commit suicide.

Like other families and friends of soldiers who have survived war only to lose the battle within themselves once home, those who knew Sherriff are left wondering if enough was done to recognize and treat his mental problems.

Bearing pain

“When I got home I thought I was fine,” said Jim Tyson of Shingletown, who served in the U.S. Army from 1996 to 2003, doing tours in Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and Iraq.

Tyson drove an armored Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer, like those often seen at construction sites around the north state, but in wartime he used the massive tractor for destruction.

With the help of his uncle, Jim Richards of Redding, a veteran of three tours in Vietnam who suffers from PTSD himself, Tyson recognized his problem and sought help. He now regularly meets with a counselor and is on antianxiety medication.

Richards said it’s difficult for someone who has been hardened by military service to admit he needs help.

“Soldiers learn how to grit their teeth and bear pain,” he said.

Both said they think the military should put every returning soldier and Marine through counseling to search for subtle signs of PTSD. While veterans are screened when they leave the service, the two men said that step isn’t enough. They said there also should be classes about PTSD for the family and friends of veterans.

Bonded not just by blood, but by their combat experience, Tyson and Richards said veterans dealing with PTSD can get the most help from talking to other veterans.

With few lines drawn between who is friend or foe in combat zones like Iraq, Tyson said the nature of fighting today adds to the stress endured by those in the military.

“Nobody plays by the rules anymore except us,” he said.

The ever-present dangers of bombs hidden along roadways and suicide bombers who could be anybody cause those serving in Iraq to be tense and ready for action at all times. Once home, it’s hard to turn that readiness off, Tyson said.

Triggers for PTSD are ever present on the home front: The sound of a jet. Smell of gasoline. A flash of light.

A Different Michael

While he said war hadn’t changed him when he first got home, Cass said her son Michael soon started to show signs of PTSD.

He’d threaten violence against those he felt had wronged him. He had trouble maintaining relationships with women.

Once a talented debater who had aspirations of becoming an attorney, Sherriff developed a short fuse, said Brian Sherriff, the oldest of his two brothers and two stepbrothers.

“He had a lot more anger and a lot less control over that anger,” Brian Sherriff said.

Michael Sherriff was diagnosed with PTSD by VA physicians and sought help at VA clinics, but came to resent them, Cass said.

His father, John Sherriff of Incline Village, Nev., said his son didn’t talk much about what kind of counseling he had or medicines he was prescribed. John Sherriff said he wanted to know, but wasn’t able to find out through the VA because his son was an adult and his medical records were confidential.

“They can’t share any information,” he said.

John Sherriff said he hopes that VA officials would be more open with the families of those suffering from PTSD, and that he thinks bureaucracy could be cut by ensuring that veterans could consistently see the same physicians.

Lost Battle

Adrift after the Army, Michael Sherriff accumulated a criminal record, including driving under the influence and concealed weapon arrests, and spent about a month in jail while he lived in Reno. He’d moved there to attend the University of Nevada at Reno. He also had a girlfriend there whom he hoped to marry some day, though their time together was turbulent and punctuated with occasional breakups, Brian Sherriff said.

The relationship continued until early this year when the girlfriend broke it off for good.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was the last breakup,” Brian Sherriff said.

Michael Sherriff had lived in Redding off and on with his mother after he returned from Iraq, and he moved in with her again after the breakup. She said he became increasingly angry and difficult to live with.

Months earlier she’d thought about checking him into a VA mental health clinic in Mountain View that takes new patients at the start of each month, she said. But Michael Sherriff had convinced her that he’d be better off staying in Reno and helping his girlfriend with her ailing father, who eventually died.

“He said the best therapy he could have was helping someone else,” Cass said.

With the first of the month approaching again, she said she once again considered trying to get her son to the clinic. But living with Michael Sherriff became too hard and on Jan. 30, she kicked him out and changed her locks.

“Michael was just out of his mind,” Cass said.

She called his ex-girlfriend, who now lived in Kirkland, Wash., and left a message warning her that he had traded his laptop for a gun and he was headed up there from Redding to get her and her mother, according to a Kirkland Police report.

“She stated that her son has a list of people he wants to get and they are the top two,” the report said.

The ex-girlfriend called the police after hearing the message and told them that during a visit in December, Michael Sherriff had pointed a gun at her and held her hostage.

Because of the threats and the gun incident, Kirkland police issued a warrant for his arrest and sent notice to their Redding counterparts. Police learned that Sherriff likely was staying in a room at the Thunderbird Lodge based on a tip that he was in a motel near the bus station and preparing to go to Kirkland.

Officers tried calling him to get him to come out and talk, but he hung up after picking up the phone, said Redding police Sgt. Bruce Bonner. Sherriff then shot himself after seeing a police officer outside the room.

Amid his angry tirades, Michael Sherriff had talked of suicide.

“He said if a cop ever came at him again he would shoot himself,” Cass said.

She said she didn’t realize he meant it.

Paul Sullivan, a spokesman for Veterans for Common Sense, said studies show more than 5,000 veteran suicides a year and a tidal wave of returning war veterans needing mental health treatment.  “What we’re trying to do is stop the VA from turning away suicidal veterans,” he said. “We think the situation has reached a crisis stage.” 

The suicide of Jonathan Schulze is cited in the class-action suit filed by two national veterans groups.

February 22, 2008 – Minneapolis / St. Paul, Minnesota — A class-action lawsuit filed by two national veterans organizations accusing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) of neglecting psychological fallout from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cites the suicide of Minnesota Marine veteran Jonathan Schulze.

Schulze is one of several deceased veterans named in the suit, which a judge last month allowed to proceed and is headed for a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in March. Schulze, 25, committed suicide in January 2007 in New Prague, Minn., five days after he allegedly was turned away from the VA hospital in St. Cloud when seeking psychiatric help.

He had fought in Iraq. Medical records showed that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

His father, Jim Schulze of the Stewart, Minn., area, said Friday that attorneys for Veterans for Common Sense and a second group, Veterans United for Truth, asked his wife, Marianne, to file a declaration in support of the case.

Marianne Schulze, Jonathan’s stepmother, reviewed her first-person observations of Jonathan’s encounters with the VA, his psychological struggles and his death.

“For some reason, he was denied the emergency care that might have saved his life,” she wrote in the four-page declaration.

VA officials last year denied that Schulze was turned away from the St. Cloud hospital. An independent investigation by the VA’s Office of the Inspector General said that family allegations were inconclusive because the hospital had no record of the exchange.

Attempts to contact U.S. Department of Justice attorneys defending the VA against the class-action suit were unsuccessful. However, court records show that the VA has argued that it already has started several new programs to address suicide prevention and that the suit should be dismissed because the court and veterans groups shouldn’t be intervening in VA policies.

The class-action suit, filed in July, is the first of its kind and represents from 600,000 to 1.6 million Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have been or will be subject to delays, confusion and corruption at VA hospitals, said Gordon Erspamer, lead attorney for Morrison and Foerster, the California firm representing the veterans.

“We’re dealing with an agency that’s unfortunately in the Dark Ages,” said Erspamer, a Minnesota native and a graduate of Hamline University Law School.

Erspamer and attorney Heather Moser said a court order precluded them from identifying individual family members to protect them from retribution from the VA.

But Jim Schulze, an Army veteran, said he’s not intimidated by going public. “What are they going to do, send me to Vietnam? Hell, I’ve been there three times already,” he said. “They didn’t take care of Jon’s needs, and they didn’t take care of my needs.”

Paul Sullivan, a spokesman for Veterans for Common Sense, said studies show more than 5,000 veteran suicides a year and a tidal wave of returning war veterans needing mental health treatment.

“What we’re trying to do is stop the VA from turning away suicidal veterans,” he said. “We think the situation has reached a crisis stage.”

The class-action suit asks the court to force the VA to conform to federal laws and the U.S. Constitution by dealing with veterans needs in a timely and comprehensive manner.

“To my mind we’re dealing with a really serious harm,” Moser said. “The Schulzes are certainly not alone in having lost their son and trying to get the VA to do something.”

Kevin Giles: (651) 298-1554

February 22, 2008, London, United Kingdom — In tones freighted with frustration, Britain’s foreign secretary, David Miliband, on Thursday told the House of Commons that “contrary to earlier explicit assurances” the Central Intelligence Agency had confirmed using an American-operated airfield on the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean for refuelling two American “rendition” flights carrying terrorism suspects in 2002.

The American acknowledgment of the flights, each carrying a single detainee, contradicted previous assurances by the United States to Britain’s Labor government that no such flights had landed on British territory or passed through British airspace. Although the C.I.A. attributed its earlier denials to a “flawed records search,” the admission could add to the animosity the government here has aroused, particularly with Labor’s left wing, over its alliance with the United States in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Miliband’s statement prompted protests from members of Parliament from various parties and from British-based human rights groups that had contended for years that Britain had been a knowing or unknowing partner in the American use of rendition flights. The term has been used to describe the secret transport of prisoners from one country or jurisdiction to another without formal extradition proceedings. It gained much of its notoriety from the American practice after Sept. 11, 2001, of transporting terrorism suspects secretly to other countries for interrogation.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, informed British officials of the 2002 flights during a visit to London last week. He issued a statement to the agency’s staff in Washington on Thursday saying that a fresh review of agency records had shown that the C.I.A. had erred in assuring Britain previously that “there had been no rendition flights involving their soil or airspace” since the 2001 attacks in the United States. Mr. Miliband said he had received a personal apology from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had told him that she shared his “deep regret” about the earlier false denials.

“That information, supplied in good faith, turned out to be wrong,” General Hayden said, adding, “This time, the examination revealed the two stops in Diego Garcia. The refueling, conducted more than five years ago, lasted just a short time. But it happened. That we found this mistake ourselves, and that we brought it to the attention of the British government, in no way changes or excuses the reality that we were in the wrong. An important part of intelligence work, inherently urgent, complex and uncertain, is to take responsibility for errors and to learn from them. In this case, the result of a flawed records search, we have done so.”

Mr. Miliband told the House of Commons he was “very sorry indeed” to have to revise the Labor government’s repeated assurances in recent years that it knew of no American rendition flights involving British airspace or airfields. The British assurances, on numerous occasions in 2005, 2006 and 2007, were given, among others, by the former prime minister, Tony Blair, who said in 2005 that he was “not prepared to believe” that the Americans had broken faith with Britain over the issue, and by a former foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who dismissed the accusations as “a very old story,” and a discredited one.

“The House and its members will be deeply disappointed at this news, and about its late emergence,” Mr. Miliband said in his Commons statement.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, visiting Brussels, spoke in similar terms. “It is unfortunate that this was not known, and it was unfortunate it happened without us knowing that it had happened,” he said, adding that Britain would press for procedures to ensure that such a breach could not happen again.

For Mr. Brown, the information about the flights came at a politically awkward moment, when he has been struggling with low poll ratings driven by a series of government mishaps, and by months of uncertainty over the future of the troubled Northern Rock bank, which was finally nationalized in legislation rushed through Parliament on Monday. Mr. Brown, a silent skeptic during the Blair years about Britain’s military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, has also been working to replace the close relationship Mr. Blair had with President Bush with a more wary stance and moving rapidly to draw down Britain’s remaining 4,200 troops in Iraq.

In his account, General Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said that neither of the two detainees carried aboard the rendition flights that refuelled at Diego Garcia “was ever part of the C.I.A.’s high-value terrorist interrogation program.” This appeared to be his way of saying what Mr. Miliband, in his Commons statement, made explicit, that the suspects on the two flights were not taken to any of the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, some of them in eastern Europe, and that they were not subjected to stress techniques that critics of the C.I.A. program have described as tantamount to torture, including waterboarding.

General Hayden said one of the detainees “was ultimately transferred to Guantánamo,” the American military prison on the eastern tip of Cuba, while the other “was returned to his home country,” identified by State Department officials in Washington on Thursday as Morocco. “These were rendition operations, nothing more,” General Hayden said. He also used the statement to refute accusations by human rights groups that the C.I.A. “had a holding facility” for terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, a 40-mile long island leased by Britain about 1,000 miles southwest of the southernmost tip of India. “That is false,” he said.

For more than 30 years, the United States has operated a military air base on the island under an agreement with Britain, using it mainly for refuelling and as a forward base for long-range bombers, including B-52’s, that have been used in military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. As many as 2,500 American military personnel are said to be stationed at the base, while Britain has only a few hundred. More than 2,000 islanders were transferred elsewhere after Britain leased the island, many of them under bitter protest.

For years, governments and Parliaments across Europe have been roiled by accusations that the C.I.A. has used European airspace and airfields for rendition flights, but in the face of insistent American denials much about the practice has remained murky. The nations listed by human rights groups as having been involved in the flights — or of turning a blind eye to use of their airfields — have included Britain, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, among others. One British rights group, Liberty, contended in 2005 that aircraft operated by or chartered by the C.I.A. had used 11 British airports and air bases since 2001, involving 210 flights.

The CIA’s acknowledgment that it misled Britain about the two flights revived those accusations, and not only among the rights groups. Mr. Miliband said the foreign office was compiling a list of flights that protest groups have cited in their accusations of British complicity in the C.I.A. rendition program, which would be passed to the United States for “their specific assurance that none of these fights were used for rendition purposes.” William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, espressed support for that plan.

“As America’s candid friend,” Mr. Hague told the BBC, Britain should insist that the Bush administration clear up all the uncertainties surrounding rendition, and not only the details of the flights, but whether it was prepared to “adopt a definition of torture” that met the standards laid down in international conventions.

February 22,, 2008 Chapel Hill, North Carolina – For John Heuer, burning a fake draft card on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus was a sort of deja vu.  Heuer said he burned draft cards in 1971 while refusing to be part of President Nixon’s army. He put his cigarette lighter to a symbolic card Thursday to support a student group’s anti-war rally.

“It’s important to get the word out in a creative way,” said Heuer, a retired UNC facilities designer.

About 30 people attended the brief noon rally in the Pit outside the Student Union. Members of UNC-CH Students for a Democratic Society handed out fake draft cards and sarcastically solicited passers-by to sign up for military duty in Iraq.

War is peace, the protesters said mockingly. For permanent peace, we need permanent war, they said.

The rally featured two speakers who were scheduled to participate in a campus teach-in about the war Thursday night.

Dahlia Wasfi, whose mother is American and father is Iraqi, began speaking out internationally after visiting occupied Iraq in 2004 and 2006.

“My family in Iraq has been liberated,” she said, “liberated from water, food, security and health care.”

Iraq war veteran Jason Hurd served in Baghdad from November 2004 to November 2005. He said one of his jobs was to shoot at anything that came within 50 meters of military vehicles.

“I went to Iraq to help people, but instead I ended up shooting civilians,” Hurd said. The people said they never had to worry about their safety before the Americans arrived, he said.

Hurd, who said he now takes medication to deal with nightmares and flashbacks, serves as president of the Asheville chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The organization, founded in 2004, calls for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage they have suffered, and full benefits and support for troops returning home.

Despite the opening sarcasm, graduate student Tamara Tal said SDS is serious about ending the war.

“The majority of Americans want this war to end,” she said. “We need to stand up, speak out and end it.”

Feb 22, 2008, Istanbul, Turkey (AP) – Turkish troops launched a ground incursion across the border into Iraq in pursuit of separatist Kurdish rebels, the military said Friday – a move that dramatically escalates Turkey’s conflict with the militants.

It is the first confirmed ground operation by the Turkish military into Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. It also raised concerns that it could trigger a wider conflict with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Kurds, despite Turkey’s assurances that its only target was the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

The ground operation started after Turkish warplanes and artillery bombed suspected rebel targets on Thursday, the military said on its Web site. The incursion was backed by the Air Force, the statement said.

Turkey has conducted air raids against the PKK guerrillas in northern Iraq since December, with the help of U.S. intelligence, and it has periodically carried out so-called “hot pursuits” in which small units sometimes spend only a few hours inside Iraq.

The announcement of a cross-border, ground incursion of a type that Turkey carried out before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a major development in its conflict with the Kurdish rebels, which started in 1984 and has claimed as many as 40,000 lives.

Turkey staged about two-dozen incursions in Iraq during the rule of Saddam, who launched brutal campaigns against the Kurdish population. Some Turkish offensives involved tens of thousands of troops. Results were mixed, with rebels suffering blows to their ranks and supplies but regrouping after the bulk of the Turkish forces had left.

PKK spokesman Ahmad Danas said two Turkish troops were killed and eight wounded in clashes along the 240-mile border, but there was no comment from the Turkish military and no way to independently confirm the claim.

The Kurdish militants are fighting for autonomy in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, and have carried out attacks on Turkish targets from bases in northern Iraq. The U.S. and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

“The Turkish Armed Forces, which values Iraq’s territorial integrity and its stability, will return as soon as planned goals are achieved,” the military said. “The executed operation will prevent the region from being a permanent and safe base for the terrorists and will contribute to Iraq’s stability and internal peace.”

Private NTV television said 10,000 troops were taking part in the offensive and had penetrated six miles into Iraq, though some reports said that not all the troops had been deployed. The operation was reportedly concentrated in the Hakurk region, south of the Turkish border town of Cukurca.

The state-run Anatolia agency reported that warplanes were seen taking off from the air base in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey. It said planes and helicopters were conducting reconnaissance flights over the border region, and that military units were deployed at the border to prevent rebel infiltration.

Dogan News Agency reported that the Habur border crossing, a major conduit for trade between Iraq and Turkey, was closed to vehicle traffic.

CNN-Turk television, however, quoted Deputy Prime Minister Hayati Yazici as saying the border gate was not closed but that priority was being given to Turkish military vehicles. Trucks routinely ferry supplies bound for U.S. military bases in Iraq through the Habur crossing.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. spokesman in Iraq, said the military had received assurances from its NATO ally Turkey that it would do everything possible to avoid “collateral damage” to innocent civilians or infrastructure.

“Multi-National Forces-Iraq is aware Turkish ground forces have entered into northern Iraq, for what we understand is an operation of limited duration to specifically target PKK terrorists in that region,” Smith said in a statement.

“The United States continues to support Turkey’s right to defend itself from the terrorist activities of the PKK and has encouraged Turkey to use all available means, to include diplomacy and close coordination with the Government of Iraq to ultimately resolve this issue,” he added.

Matthew Bryza, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for southeastern Europe, cited the importance of a Nov. 5 meeting in which President Bush promised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Washington would share intelligence on the PKK.

“The land operation is a whole new level,” Bryza said in Belgium. “What I can say is that what we’ve been doing until now has been working quite well.”

The European Commission appealed to Turkey to act with restraint.

“Turkey should refrain from taking any disproportionate military action and respect human rights and the rule of law,” said Commission spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy.

“The EU understands Turkey’s need to protect its population from terrorism,” she said. “We encourage Turkey to continue to pursue dialogue with international partners.”

Turkish President Abdullah Gul spoke with his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani late Thursday and gave him information about the goals of the operation, Gul’s office said. Gul also invited Talabani to visit Turkey.

The military said its target was PKK rebels and that it does not want to harm civilians “and other local groups that do not act in enmity against the Turkish Armed Forces.”

Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert with the research center TEPAV, said the operation was likely launched to hit the group before the traditional start of the fighting season in the spring.

“I think it is aimed to keep the PKK under pressure before the group starts entering Turkey,” he said on CNN-Turk television.

Iraqi border forces officer Col. Hussein Tamer said Turkish shelling on Thursday hit several Kurdish villages in the Sedafan area, some 20 miles from the border.

Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for Iraqi Kurdish security forces, said sporadic bombing had taken place in the border areas, but no casualties were reported.

Fouad Hussein, a spokesman for the semiautonomous Kurdish government in Iraq, said the Kurdish Peshmerga forces had been put on alert.

He said Iraqi Kurdish forces also had tightened security around bases housing Turkish military monitors operating in northern Iraq with permission from local authorities under a 1996 agreement.

“The government of Kurdistan ordered the Peshmerga forces to be on alert in fear of any Turkish incursion on Iraqi territory,” he said, claiming that Turkish military monitors had tried to leave their bases in violation of the accord.

“Those troops tried to move out, but the Peshmerga forces forced them to return to their camps within half an hour,” he said.

Turkish media reports said Friday that a total of 1,200 Turkish monitors in four camps in Iraq were helping to coordinate the ground offensive.

A military jury in Hawaii found Army Specialist Christopher Shore not guilty of third-degree murder, but guilty of the lesser charge.

Shore had blamed his platoon leader – charged with premeditated murder – for the 23 June killing.

Shore could face up to eight years in jail, a dishonourable discharge and a drop to the army’s lowest pay grade.

During the trial, he said he had been ordered to fire at the Iraqi by his platoon leader, Sgt Trey Corrales.

The Iraqi was suspected of firing at a US helicopter. Shore denied killing the man, saying he had intentionally missed him.

Sentencing will take place later on Wednesday.

Sgt Corrales will stand trial on 22 April.

February 23, 2008 – The Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations – not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans – already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that’s $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today’s dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

Most Americans have yet to feel these costs. The price in blood has been paid by our voluntary military and by hired contractors. The price in treasure has, in a sense, been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for it – in fact, taxes on the rich have actually fallen. Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed. The costs of the war are real even if they have been deferred, possibly to another generation.
Background

    * American voters must choose: more benefits or more defence

    * $3 trillion budget leaves little for Bush to bank on

    * MoD forced to cut budget by £1.5bn

    * They’re running our tanks on empty

On the eve of war, there were discussions of the likely costs. Larry Lindsey, President Bush’s economic adviser and head of the National Economic Council, suggested that they might reach $200 billion. But this estimate was dismissed as “baloney” by the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. His deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, suggested that postwar reconstruction could pay for itself through increased oil revenues. Mitch Daniels, the Office of Management and Budget director, and Secretary Rumsfeld estimated the costs in the range of $50 to $60 billion, a portion of which they believed would be financed by other countries. (Adjusting for inflation, in 2007 dollars, they were projecting costs of between $57 and $69 billion.) The tone of the entire administration was cavalier, as if the sums involved were minimal.

Even Lindsey, after noting that the war could cost $200 billion, went on to say: “The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.” In retrospect, Lindsey grossly underestimated both the costs of the war itself and the costs to the economy. Assuming that Congress approves the rest of the $200 billion war supplemental requested for fiscal year 2008, as this book goes to press Congress will have appropriated a total of over $845 billion for military operations, reconstruction, embassy costs, enhanced security at US bases, and foreign aid programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the fifth year of the war draws to a close, operating costs (spending on the war itself, what you might call “running expenses”) for 2008 are projected to exceed $12.5 billion a month for Iraq alone, up from $4.4 billion in 2003, and with Afghanistan the total is $16 billion a month. Sixteen billion dollars is equal to the annual budget of the United Nations, or of all but 13 of the US states. Even so, it does not include the $500 billion we already spend per year on the regular expenses of the Defence Department. Nor does it include other hidden expenditures, such as intelligence gathering, or funds mixed in with the budgets of other departments.

Because there are so many costs that the Administration does not count, the total cost of the war is higher than the official number. For example, government officials frequently talk about the lives of our soldiers as priceless. But from a cost perspective, these “priceless” lives show up on the Pentagon ledger simply as $500,000 – the amount paid out to survivors in death benefits and life insurance. After the war began, these were increased from $12,240 to $100,000 (death benefit) and from $250,000 to $400,000 (life insurance). Even these increased amounts are a fraction of what the survivors might have received had these individuals lost their lives in a senseless automobile accident. In areas such as health and safety regulation, the US Government values a life of a young man at the peak of his future earnings capacity in excess of $7 million – far greater than the amount that the military pays in death benefits. Using this figure, the cost of the nearly 4,000 American troops killed in Iraq adds up to some $28 billion.

The costs to society are obviously far larger than the numbers that show up on the government’s budget. Another example of hidden costs is the understating of US military casualties. The Defence Department’s casualty statistics focus on casualties that result from hostile (combat) action – as determined by the military. Yet if a soldier is injured or dies in a night-time vehicle accident, this is officially dubbed “non combat related” – even though it may be too unsafe for soldiers to travel during daytime.

In fact, the Pentagon keeps two sets of books. The first is the official casualty list posted on the DOD website. The second, hard-to-find, set of data is available only on a different website and can be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act [as it was by Veterans for Common Sense]. This data shows that the total number of soldiers who have been wounded, injured, or suffered from disease is double the number wounded in combat. Some will argue that a percentage of these non-combat injuries might have happened even if the soldiers were not in Iraq. Our new research shows that the majority of these injuries and illnesses can be tied directly to service in the war.

From the unhealthy brew of emergency funding, multiple sets of books, and chronic underestimates of the resources required to prosecute the war, we have attempted to identify how much we have been spending – and how much we will, in the end, likely have to spend. The figure we arrive at is more than $3 trillion. Our calculations are based on conservative assumptions. They are conceptually simple, even if occasionally technically complicated. A $3 trillion figure for the total cost strikes us as judicious, and probably errs on the low side. Needless to say, this number represents the cost only to the United States. It does not reflect the enormous cost to the rest of the world, or to Iraq.

From the beginning, the United Kingdom has played a pivotal role – strategic, military, and political – in the Iraq conflict. Militarily, the UK contributed 46,000 troops, 10 per cent of the total. Unsurprisingly, then, the British experience in Iraq has paralleled that of America: rising casualties, increasing operating costs, poor transparency over where the money is going, overstretched military resources, and scandals over the squalid conditions and inadequate medical care for some severely wounded veterans.

Before the war, Gordon Brown set aside £1 billion for war spending. As of late 2007, the UK had spent an estimated £7 billion in direct operating expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan (76 per cent of it in Iraq). This includes money from a supplemental “special reserve”, plus additional spending from the Ministry of Defence.

The special reserve comes on top of the UK’s regular defence budget. The British system is particularly opaque: funds from the special reserve are “drawn down” by the Ministry of Defence when required, without specific approval by Parliament. As a result, British citizens have little clarity about how much is actually being spent.

In addition, the social costs in the UK are similar to those in the US – families who leave jobs to care for wounded soldiers, and diminished quality of life for those thousands left with disabilities.

By the same token, there are macroeconomic costs to the UK as there have been to America, though the long-term costs may be less, for two reasons. First, Britain did not have the same policy of fiscal profligacy; and second, until 2005, the United Kingdom was a net oil exporter.

We have assumed that British forces in Iraq are reduced to 2,500 this year and remain at that level until 2010. We expect that British forces in Afghanistan will increase slightly, from 7,000 to 8,000 in 2008, and remain stable for three years. The House of Commons Defence Committee has recently found that despite the cut in troop levels, Iraq war costs will increase by 2 per cent this year and personnel costs will decrease by only 5 per cent. Meanwhile, the cost of military operations in Afghanistan is due to rise by 39 per cent. The estimates in our model may be significantly too low if these patterns continue.

Based on assumptions set out in our book, the budgetary cost to the UK of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2010 will total more than £18 billion. If we include the social costs, the total impact on the UK will exceed £20 billion.

© Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, 2008. Extracted from The Three Trillion Dollar War, to be published by Allen Lane on February 28 (£20). Copies can be ordered for £18 with free delivery from The Times BooksFirst 0870 1608080.

Joseph Stiglitz was chief economist at the World Bank and won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics in 2001. Linda Bilmes is a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

February 22, 2008 – BELGRADE, Serbia — Demonstrators attacked the United States Embassy and set part of it ablaze on Thursday as tens of thousands of angry Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade to protest Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The United States has been a strong advocate of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia and was among the first countries to recognize the new state, stoking deep resentment. Rian Harris, an embassy spokeswoman, said that a body had been found inside the building, but that all embassy staff members were accounted for.

Witnesses said that at least 100 people broke into the embassy, which was closed, and burned some of its rooms. One protester ripped the American flag from the facade of the building. An estimated 1,000 demonstrators cheered as the vandals, some wearing masks, jumped onto the building’s balcony waving a Serbian flag and chanting “Serbia, Serbia!” the witnesses said. A police convoy firing tear gas dispersed the crowd.

The Associated Press reported that the small fires at the embassy were quickly extinguished.

Serbian television reported that the Croatian Embassy had also been attacked, and the state news agency said that the Bosnian and Turkish Embassies were also targets. The police said at least 140 people had been injured in the incidents, 32 of them police officers. Security sources estimated that 150,000 people joined the protests.

Groups also broke into a McDonald’s in central Belgrade and destroyed its interior. Witnesses said vandals were attacking foreign-owned shops, including a Nike store, and were seen carrying off shoes and other goods as the Serbian police looked on.

The United States Embassy had been closed since Sunday after it was stoned.

R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, telephoned Serbian officials to formally complain about the breaching of the embassy, said a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack. Mr. McCormack told reporters on Thursday that “we would hold the Serbian government personally responsible for the safety and well-being of our embassy employees.”

He added that the security that had been provided was completely inadequate.

The United Nations Security Council issued a unanimous statement of the 15 members saying they “condemn in the strongest terms the mob attacks against embassies in Belgrade which have resulted in damage to embassy premises and have endangered diplomatic personnel.” The action was taken at the urging of Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador.

The violence fueled fears in Washington and Brussels that Serbia was turning to the virulent nationalism of the past. But Serbian analysts predicted the country would ultimately embrace the West as it came to terms with losing its medieval heartland.

In recent days, Western leaders have watched with growing alarm as Serbia’s hard-line prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, who helped lead the revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, has replicated the nationalist talk of the late dictator, who used Serbs’ outrage that their ancestral heartland was dominated by Muslim Albanians to come to power in Serbia.

“As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia,” Mr. Kostunica told the crowd in Belgrade. “We’re not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us,” he said of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

In a sign of the divisions within Serbia’s government, the pro-Western president, Boris Tadic, was absent from the rally, on a state visit to Romania.

Western diplomats said their hope for a moderate Serbia had been buttressed by the recent re-election of Mr. Tadic, who campaigned on the argument that holding on to Kosovo did not justify sacrificing Serbia’s future in Europe. Their optimism, however, was tempered by the strong election showing for Mr. Tadic’s opponent, Tomislav Nikolic, a far-right nationalist who has exploited Serbs’ discontent over Kosovo by arguing that Serbia should reject Europe and look to Moscow and China instead.

But while Moscow has gained in popularity in Serbia by blocking Kosovo’s integration into the international community, leading Serbian intellectuals said most Serbs realized that the Kremlin’s willingness to fight for their cause was limited. “Russia wasn’t there to help Serbs during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, it wasn’t there to help Serbs in 1999 during the NATO bombing, and most people realize it will not go that far now,” said Zoran Dogramadziev, a leading Serbian writer.

In the short term, analysts said an anti-European Union backlash would gain force after the West’s support for an independent Kosovo. But Marko Blagojevic, an analyst with the Center for Democracy and Free Elections in Belgrade and a pollster, stressed that recent polls showed that 65 percent of Serbs saw their future in the European Union.

Mr. Blagojevic said he did not believe this had drastically changed. He noted that only about 10 percent of Serbs supported going to war over Kosovo.

Serbian analysts said that rather than reflecting a resurgence of dangerous nationalism, the protests over Kosovo reflected disenchantment by the “losers of the transition” — those Serbs who have not benefited from the country’s democratic transformation during the eight years since Mr. Milosevic fell.

Unemployment hovers at about 21 percent, while the country’s annual per capita gross domestic product of about $7,400 has made Serbia one of Europe’s poorest countries.

Without European Union membership, Serbs do not enjoy the open borders of their neighbors. Many Serbs say they feel isolated and closed in. Yet many of the younger generation say they would happily trade poor, landlocked Kosovo for better jobs and economic security.

“For my generation, the opportunity to have a good life is far more important than this piece of land,” said Aleksandar Obradovic, a 23-year-old political scientist from Belgrade who did not protest on Thursday and, like many Serbs, has never been to Kosovo.

Ljubica Gojgic, a leading Serbian commentator, noted that Mr. Milosevic had been overthrown by the Serbian people, who had recently put their faith in a newly elected moderate president, backed by the West. “If Tadic is good enough for the E.U. and Washington, why is he not acceptable to the Albanians in Kosovo?” she asked. “Milosevic is dead.”

Bostjan Videmsek reported from Belgrade, and Dan Bilefsky from Pristina, Kosovo. Warren Hoge contributed reporting from New York, and David Stout from Washington.

February 21, 2008 – If Americans want to continue the Iraq War, then Sen. John McCain — the apparent Republican presidential candidate and relentless hawk — is their man.

It seems McCain was not kidding when he said the U.S. might have to remain in Iraq for 100 years.

At a town meeting in New Hampshire, McCain was told that President Bush had indicated the possibility of U.S. forces staying in Iraq for 50 years.

“Make it a hundred,” McCain responded.

Presumably McCain means that still would be with a volunteer U.S. Army because even the “straight talking” senator would not dare to suggest that a military draft would be needed to carry out his grand imperialist plan for Iraq. Not if he wants to get elected.

Meantime, Bush is no longer keeping up his charade of party neutrality. In an interview last Sunday with Fox News, Bush described McCain as a “true conservative,” who is in lockstep with him on a strong defense, against abortion rights and in favor of making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, with the biggest cuts for the richest.

While apparently endorsing McCain as his successor, Bush also cautioned that McCain needed to shore up his standing with GOP conservatives. In other words, Bush is hoping for a third term through a proxy.

McCain has shown some heresy with the conservative wing of the GOP by displaying leniency toward illegal immigrants. He also went against the conservative grain by sponsoring legislation intended to reform campaign finance.

The right-wingers in the party — especially the hard-line radio talk-show commentators like Rush Limbaugh — have lashed out harshly against McCain for his apostasy. But these critics have no other place to go.

After losing the nomination to Bush in the 2000 race for the presidential nomination, McCain has devoted a lot of time to wooing evangelicals and pandering to the far right in his party. Early on, he made amends with the late Jerry Falwell and delivered a commencement address at Falwell’s Liberty University.

In his earlier campaign for the presidency, he had denounced the evangelicals as “agents of intolerance.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” seems to be the motto of the ambitious McCain.

Citing McCain’s statement that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 100 years, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has indicated that if she is elected she would seek a much quicker withdrawal. Both Clinton and her rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., are all over the place when it comes to their preferred timing to pullout U.S. forces from Iraq.

Clinton’s Senate votes to attack Iraq and to fund the war have become her albatross. She needs to clarify her position.

McCain is on the same page with Bush in foreign policy. He supported the “surge” of sending 30,000 more troops to reinforce the occupation of Iraq.

And he has denounced colleagues who want to bring the troops home as raising the “white flag” of surrender.

He also supports the total U.S. commitment to Israel and proposes to intensify U.S. aid and technology to give Israel a “qualitative edge” over the beleaguered occupied Palestinians.

He also warns that Iran’s “pursuit of nuclear weapons clearly poses an unacceptable risk.”

He parts company with Bush on torture, having suffered for five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War.

Stressing his conservative credentials, McCain says he is against federal farm subsidies and against “big-government-mandated health care.”

He also opposed the new Medicare prescription-drug law, claiming it saddles the taxpayers with hugely expensive entitlement programs.

McCain is trying to bend over backward to prove to the GOP that he is the leader who can win the independent vote and continue the party’s occupancy of the White House.

But with Bush’s unpopularity in the polls, is the president a help or a hindrance to McCain’s bid for the White House?