The three trillion dollar war

The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have grown to staggering proportions
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes
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 Deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter. But of course the laws are not repealed.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.

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. 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

The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq

Did Rumsfeld Authorize War Crimes?
By STEPHEN SOLDZ
Wikileaks has obtained the long kept secret Rules of Engagement (ROE) for U.S. troops in Iraq. This document sets out the rules guiding authorized U.S. troop actions in that occupation. While the Wikileaks document dates from 2005, as these ROEs generally change slowly the rules for today are likely similar, though we can't be sure, of course, to what extent more recent ROE's differ.Among several interesting nuggets in the ROE, it provides indications that U.S. attacks likely to result in civilian deaths required authorization at the top of the Pentagon, by the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense). Thus, the ROE states repeatedly; "If the target is in a HIGH CD [collateral damage] area, SECDEF approval is required." And what is the definition of a High Collateral Damage area? The ROE contains a set of explicit definitions of its terms. There we find High Collateral Damage Targets defined as:
"Those targets that, if struck, have a ten percent probability of causing collateral damage through blast debris and fragmentation and are estimated to result in significant collateral effects on noncombatant persons and structures, including:
(A) Non-combatant casualties estimated at 30 or greater;
(B) Significant effects on Category I No Strike protected sites in accordance with Ref D;
(C) In the case of dual-use facilities, effects that significantly impact the non-combatant population, including significant effects on the environment/facilities/infrastructure not related to an adversary's war making ability; or
(D) Targets in close proximity to known human shields."
Thus, all attacks, except those in self-defense or active pursuit, with a reasonable possibility of harming 30 or more civilians needed approval from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Presumably such approval would need to be in writing. The ROE thus suggest that there may exist an extensive documentary record of requests, and possibly Rumsfeld's approval or rejection, for attacks with the potential for resulting in significant civilian casualties. Congress should demand access to these documents to determine the extent to which attacks resulting in civilian casualties were authorized, potentially providing insight into who was responsible for possible war crimes committed in the course of the occupation.
While much of the rest of the ROE appears rather unsurprising, there are a couple of other interesting aspects to the document. One is that the main "hostile forces," from the U.S. perspective are the Baath remnants, such as the Special Republican Guard and the Baath Party Militia. There is no mention of Iraqi al-Qaida or its predecessors. These predecessors, led by al-Zarqawi, had identified with and pledged allegiance to al-Qaida as early as October, 2004, yet they receive no mention in the ROE. The ROE rather refers to Baath forces that "have transitioned from overt conventional resistance to insurgent methods of resistance."
While the Sunni al-Qaida predecessors do not make the list of hostile forces, the Shia-based Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr does make the list of "Declared Hostile Forces," However, as of the ROE's writing, this status was "suspended and such individuals will not be engaged except in self-defense."
Another interesting feature of the ROE is a complete ignoring of the language barriers separating U.S. troops from the Iraqi populace. Thus, in a section on graduated force, the first stage is "shout verbal warnings to halt." There is not even a mention of the fact that most Iraqis cannot understand warnings shouted in English. In general, the ROE is notable for lacking any recognition that, in an "insurgency," there are at best blurry boundaries between combatants and noncombatants. Thus, there is no emphasis of the need to take extraordinary measures to protect the civilian population. Rather, it provides a rationale for virtually any attacks:
"US Forces may always use force, up to and including deadly force, to neutralize and/or detain individuals who commit hostile acts or exhibit hostile intent against US Forces or Coalition Forces."
As we have seen repeatedly, from the numerous roadblock killings of civilians to the Haditha massacre, this ROE authorization to use force can be used to provide cover for virtually any civilian killings. The ROE suggests that preventing such deaths was low on the priority list of those officials writing the rules of engagement for the occupation. Even so, a military study found that less than half of US occupation soldiers would report a unit member for violating an ROE.
Thus, even the limited protections provided civilians in the ROE were often not present on the ground.
Stephen Soldz is psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web site and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog.

What Do the Pentagon's Budget Numbers Mean?

The Chaos in America's Vast Security Budget
By WINSLOW T. WHEELER
The new 2009 defense budget has just been released. The more you look into the numbers, the more things become unclear, very unclear. Most of the numbers being released today are inaccurate or incomplete, or both. Other numbers will change as the year progresses, but we do not know if they will go up or down.
The Department of Defense (DOD) says its budget request for the next fiscal year--2009 - is $515.4 billion. George W. Bush's budget as shown today by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) says the Pentagon request is $518.3 billion, a $2.9 billion difference. OMB is right; the Pentagon "forgot" to include some permanent appropriations (also called "entitlements" or "mandatory" spending) for retirement and some other non-hardware spending.
The $518.3 billion is incomplete; it does not include $70 billion requested to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But that number too is inaccurate. It does not include enough money to fight the wars for more than a few months in 2009. If the violence in Iraq stays at its recently reduced levels--or even declines - that $70 billion should be about doubled to get through the entire year. If things fall apart in Iraq and continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan, as is very likely, that 70 billion should be about tripled. In either case, the amount requested in the budget for the wars is off by $70 to $140 billion.
This barely scratches the surface of the numbers in the Pentagon's budget that are cooked by the military services, civilian managers, and budget personnel. But, to add to the confusion and obfuscation, there are other national security costs, and uncertainties, in other agency budget requests.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has requested $17.1 billion for nuclear weapons research, storage, and related activities. Programs sure to be rejected by the Democratic Congress have been included, and Congress loves to add pork to DOE's budget, just as it does to the Pentagon's budget. How much? It could be as much as 10 percent, but it is not clear if Congress will add the money for its pork or force DOE to pay for it out of the programs DOE requests.
The President is requesting an additional $3.2 billion for miscellaneous defense costs in other agencies, such as the General Services Administration's National Defense Stockpile, the Selective Service, and the FBI's international activities. Quite minor and usually ignored, these accounts are not usually the subject of gimmicks from OMB or enough attention in Congress to mean significant changes.
If you add all the official estimates from OMB for the above, you get a total of $608.6 for 2009. That total equates to a category in the president's budget called "National Defense." It includes the programs that should be included, beyond just the Pentagon, to calculate what we spend for our security. But none of the numbers are right; not only are they incomplete, as indicated above, but $608.6 billion is not the number OMB shows for the combined total for these activities, $611.1 billion. The budget materials released today do not seem to explain. Your guess is as good as mine.
There is more--both spending and confusion; lots more.
Any inclusive definition of U.S. security spending should surely also include the budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): add $40.1 billion. With DHS being one of the worst managed federal agencies--according to both conventional wisdom and OMB's rating of federal agencies called the scorecard of the "President's Management Agenda" - there is no telling just what will happen to its budget request. Will it go up because homeland security is important, or will it go down because DHS is incompetent?
There are also important security costs in the budget of the State Department for diplomacy, arms aid to allies, UN peacekeeping, reconstruction aid for Iraq and Afghanistan and foreign aid for other countries. Surely, these contribute to U.S. national security; add $38.4 billion. Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argued that the nation spends too little on diplomacy and aid to other nations. Will this help boost Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's budget, or will Congress take a few whacks at politically unpopular "foreign aid" in an election year, as it usually does?
Surely, U.S. security expenses include the human costs of past and current wars; add another $91.3 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Does this budget under-predict the costs for veterans from current and past wars as has been the case for the last few years? Very probably, but by how much is currently unknown.
We should add the share of the interest for the national debt that can be attributed to national defense spending, but few agree what that share is. One reasonable calculation argues that the "National Defense" budget category constitutes about 21 percent of federal spending, and that percent of the 2009 deficit should be calculated. That would be $54.5 billion. However, that number is certainly too small as the deficit is likely to grow with spending not yet counted for the wars and economic stimulus. Moreover, some argue that spending for the wars has come on top of other spending and, thus, a larger percentage of the deficit should be charged to national defense.
There's more; add the cost to the Treasury for military retirement and that are not counted in the DOD budget; that's $12.1 billion. Some would also add the interest earned in Treasury's military retirement fund, another $16.2 billion.
Get the point? The articles that newspapers all over the country publish today will be filled with numbers to the first decimal point; they will seem precise. Few of them will be accurate; many will be incomplete, some will be both. Worse, few of us will be able to tell what numbers are too high, which are too low, and which are so riddled with gimmicks to make them lose real meaning.
Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information and author of The Wastrels of Defense. Over 31 years, he worked for US Senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office on national security issues.

Rising CostOf Iraq WarMay ReignitePublic Debate

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and JOHN D. MCKINNON
Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON -- The cost of U.S. military operations in Iraq is risingrapidly, and could reignite the national debate about the war, which hastaken a back seat to the economy as an issue for most voters this electionyear.Today, the White House will propose a federal budget that for the first timetops $3 trillion. The plan is expected to include a record sum for thePentagon and an additional $70 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan, while essentially freezing discretionary spending in areasother than national security, including most domestic programs.
The sharp contrast between President Bush's defense and domestic-spendinggoals could give Democrats a potent political weapon as the economycontinues to deteriorate. But with the Democratic-controlled Congress likelyto scrap most of Mr. Bush's spending plans, his funding proposal for Iraqmay be one of the budget's most enduring elements.Mr. Bush's budget calls for about $515 billion to be allocated to theDefense Department for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, according topeople familiar with the matter. If passed by Congress, that would be thelargest military budget -- adjusted for inflation -- since World War II.Pending RequestsThe budget also includes a separate request of $70 billion for Iraq andAfghanistan for the first quarter of fiscal 2009 alone. For this fiscalyear, Congress has yet to approve additional spending of about $102 billionthe White House has requested for the two conflicts.Boosted in part by rising fuel prices and the expense of repairing orreplacing vehicles worn down by the long war, U.S. spending on Iraq hasdoubled in the past three years.Last year's buildup of U.S. troops -- known as the "surge" -- and themilitary's growing use of expensive heavy munitions to roust Iraqiinsurgents also have contributed to the cost increase. According to a recentCongressional Research Service report, the average monthly cost of theconflict -- by CRS's measure -- hit $10.3 billion in the year ended Sept.30, 2007, up from $4.4 billion in fiscal 2004.$1 Trillion MarkWith Congress having already approved $691 billion in war spending since2001, the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined could rise to justunder $900 billion by next spring and could near the $1 trillion mark by theend of 2009.Pentagon officials acknowledge that war costs have risen sharply, but theysay the added spending is justified not only by higher fuel and food prices
but also by the need to provide better protective gear and other equipmentto U.S. troops. They also note that the U.S. has begun spending tens ofmillions of dollars a year on salaries for what the Pentagon calls"Concerned Local Citizens," the mainly Sunni fighters who now function asneighborhood-watch organizations in many parts of Iraq.On the domestic front, the president's new budget is expected to keep atight lid on costs that aren't security-related. One big target for savingswould be Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly. But the budgetfor homeland security is expected to rise sharply again, with much of themoney going to increasing immigration enforcement and border security.Today's announcement is also expected to project deficits in the range of$400 billion for both 2008 and 2009, thanks to a big economic-stimulus planCongress is expected to approve. If war costs were fully included, the 2009deficit would be even higher.Congress has been unable to limit war funding in the past. Last year,several measures aimed at changing administration policy failed to make itthrough both chambers, damping calls for change. The progress the U.S. troopsurge has made in tamping down violence in parts of Iraq also has helped todislodge the war from the top of the political agenda.But the issue of war costs is gaining traction. Democrats believe they havea stronger hand now amid fears of a recession. Polling and focus groupscommissioned by several unions and activist groups last year suggested thatDemocrats should focus on the war's impact on domestic needs as they girdfor a budget battle with Mr. Bush. According to a memo describing theresults, the best way for the Democrats to frame their message would be tocriticize Mr. Bush for vetoing "important priorities at home after spendinghalf a trillion dollars in Iraq."
A big test of this approach could come as soon as this spring, when Congressbegins debating the additional Iraq war funding the Bush administration hasrequested for this year.Democrats' MessageKansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius sought to make those points last Monday in theDemocrats' official response to President Bush's State of the Union address.She complained that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan "have cost us dearly --in lives lost; in thousands of wounded warriors whose futures may never bethe same; [and] in challenges not met here at home because our resourceswere committed elsewhere."On the campaign trail, Democrats have hit that message harder, arguing thaturgent domestic needs -- from children's health care to expanded spending onhighways and other infrastructure -- are going unmet because of the highcosts of the two conflicts."We are spending $9 billion to $10 billion every month," Democraticpresidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama said late last month during a debatein South Carolina. "That's money that could be going right here in SouthCarolina to lay broadband lines in rural communities, to put kids back toschool."Several progressive groups and labor unions joined forces last fall to runTV ads targeting lawmakers for voting against a Democratic-led effort toexpand health insurance for children. One ad sponsored by USAction said"health care for 1.7 million kids costs the same as just one week in Iraq.But Republicans in Congress" helped President Bush to block the program'sexpansion.White House officials believe they weathered Democrats' attacks over Mr.Bush's veto of the expansion. Many voters, the White House believes, agreedthat the initiative represented an ill-advised, big-government-styleresponse to the country's health-care problems. They plan to maintain that
defense as Democrats broaden their arguments for more spending to includeinfrastructure and social spending.Senior military officials, meanwhile, want to see the Defense Department'sbudget grow beyond what Mr. Bush has requested so far. Adm. Michael Mullen,the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that total defensespending -- for the Defense Department itself and the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan -- should rise to 4% of gross domestic product a year. That'sequivalent to about $700 billion a year.Replacing EquipmentSenior Pentagon officials say they need the extra money to pay for thecontinuing costs of expanding the nation's active-duty military by tens ofthousands of troops and repairing or replacing the planes, helicopters,tanks and armored vehicles consumed by the two wars.Speaking to reporters Friday, Gen. James Conway, the commandant of theMarine Corps, argued that a wartime defense budget of 4% of GDP would besmall compared with the ratios in previous conflicts. "We're fighting a waron less than 4%," he said. "It was 9 during Korea, 13 for Vietnam, 35, 38for World War II. We're making do with it, but...we do see some needs on thehorizon."The 30,000 additional U.S. troops sent to Iraq last year as part of thesurge are expected to return to the U.S. by the end of the summer, bringingthe total U.S. troop presence back down to about 130,000.Defense Secretary Robert Gates has talked in the past about trying towithdraw an additional 30,000 troops by the end of the year to reduce thestrains on the military. Mr. Bush said this week that he may hold off on anyfurther troop reductions for fear of jeopardizing recent security gains inIraq.

False Pretenses

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.
Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-up to war:
On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.
In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."
On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January 2003 to the eve of the invasion.

It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project; the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.
In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups, joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.
The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war. Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.
The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005, with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment; instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth" regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of former government officials, have publicly — and in some cases vociferously — accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this nation's allies on their way to war.
Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war intelligence — not the judgment, public statements, or public accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of the officials — Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz — have testified before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass. Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Manufacturing Threats

December, 26 2007 By Dave Edwards
News that British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons had been jailed in Sudan after allowing her pupils to call a teddy bear Mohammed fed straight into the UK media’s hate factory and its “war for civilisation”.The Gibbons story was mentioned in a massive 257 articles in UK national newspapers in the first week, providing an excuse to boost claims of “genocide” in Sudan in 10 of these.The suffering in Sudan has certainly been appalling - it is estimated that the conflict has cost the lives of 100,000 people with two million made homeless. But Iraq is far worse - the occupation has so far resulted in the deaths of 1 million people with more than 4 million displaced from their homes. Whereas, over the last year, the term “genocide” has been used in 246 articles mentioning Sudan - many of these affirming that genocide has taken place - the results of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, and of the earlier sanctions regime, are essentially never described in similar terms.To its credit, an Independent leader warned that it would be wrong “to treat Ms Gibbons' case, as some have done, as a harbinger of the supposedly inevitable clash between the ‘enlightened’ West and ‘primitive’ Islam”. (Leader, Ms Gibbons and a teddy bear named Mohamed,’ The Independent, November 30, 2007)The advice was largely ignored, however. Following Gibbons’ release after eight days in jail, a December 4 Telegraph leader described how the “delight and mutual congratulations that have characterised the agreement between the Sudanese dictator and the British authorities... presents a nauseating picture”. The arrest being, after all, “testimony to the danger of allowing a rogue state to proceed unchecked”. (Leader, ‘Sudan’s grotesque stunt,’ Daily Telegraph, December 4, 2007)Is Sudan, then, to replace Iraq as the third “rogue” member of the “axis of evil”? Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips appeared to recommend as much, writing a day earlier of how the teddy bear incident was “yet another symptom of the great onslaught being mounted against our civilisation and towards which not one inch of ground must be given if that civilisation is to survive“. (Phillips, ‘The teddy-bear teacher and Labour's spineless response to a rogue state that threatens us all ...,’ Daily Mail, December 3, 2007)Such preposterous hyperbole belongs in the same category as Hitler's description of Czechoslovakia as "a dagger pointed at the heart of Germany". (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, on Power And Ideology - The Managua Lectures, South End Press, 1987, p.33)Phillips was similarly outraged when 15 British sailors were “kidnapped” by an Iranian warship on March 23 while on patrol in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq. Then, she raged at “a military debacle for Britain - a self-inflicted humiliation at the hands of Iran, at a time when the mortal danger posed to the free world by this rogue state is increasing by the day“. (Phillips, ‘The real issue isn't Mr Bean selling his story. It's our utter humiliation by Iran,’ Daily Mail, April 16, 2007)Iran was, of course, “steadily advancing towards its goal of obtaining nuclear weapons with which it is threatening to bring about the apocalypse it has been working towards for the past three decades”.Like the rest of the media, Phillips later fell silent when evidence emerged suggesting that the British sailors had in fact strayed into Iranian waters, and had therefore not been “kidnapped” at all. On July 22, the UK Foreign Affairs Committee reported:"We conclude that there is evidence to suggest that the map of the Shatt al-Arab waterway provided by the Government was less clear than it ought to have been. The Government was fortunate that it was not in Iran’s interests to contest the accuracy of the map.” (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmfaff/880/880.pdf)Martin Pratt, Director of Research at the International Boundaries Research Unit at Durham University, pointed out that the British government’s map was “certainly an oversimplification... it could reasonably be argued that it was deliberately misleading”. (Ibid)George Monbiot - Iran “Is A Dangerous And Unpredictable State”This did nothing to dim the enthusiasm of journalists eager to portray Iran as a threat to world peace. George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian last month: "I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb." He added: "Yes, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad.” (Monbiot, ‘The Middle East has had a secretive nuclear power in its midst for years,’ The Guardian, November 20, 2007; http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,2213812,00.html)We wrote to Monbiot on the same day:Hi GeorgeIn your latest Guardian article, you write:"I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the bomb."What is the basis for your belief, please?You also write:"Yes, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous and unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad. The president is a Holocaust denier opposed to the existence of Israel."Is it your understanding that Ahmadinejad, rather than Khamenei, is the supreme ruler of Iran? If so, why? And which "acts of terror abroad" do you have in mind? Do you include the claims that Iran has supplied EFPs to blow up US-UK tanks and troops in Iraq, for example?Finally, what is the basis for your belief that Ahmadinejad is "opposed to the existence of Israel"?Best wishesDE and DCWe wrote a further two times but received no replies. Monbiot had earlier written to us in February 2005:“If, as I think you have, you have begun to force people working for newspapers and broadcasters to look over their left shoulders as well as their right, and worry about being held to account for the untruths they disseminate, then you have already performed a major service to democracy.” (Email, February 2, 2005)These were kind words but they surely overstated the case. In truth, we have little power to hold journalists to account - it is a simple matter for them to ignore our emails.Monbiot’s comments on Iran recall his pre-war comments on Iraq. At a crucial time politically, he wrote in November 2002: "if war turns out to be the only means of removing Saddam, then let us support a war whose sole and incontestable purpose is that and only that..." (Monbiot, 'See you in court, Tony,' The Guardian, November 26, 2002)We asked him:"Can you explain why you would prioritise the support of such a war ahead of a war to remove the Algerian generals, the Turkish regime, the Colombian regime, or maybe Putin? Would you also support a war to remove these regimes, if this turns out to be the only way?" (Email, November 26, 2002. See our series of Media Alerts, beginning with: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/02/021202_Monbiot_Iraq.HTM)He replied the same day:“The other nations you mention have some, admittedly flimsy, domestic means of redress: in other words, being democracies, or nominal democracies, citizens can, in theory, remove them without recourse to violent means. There is no existing process within Iraq for removing the regime peacefully. Like many of those who oppose this war with Iraq, I also want to help the Iraqi people to shake off their dictator...“As I suggest in my article, we must try the non-violent means first, and there are plenty which have not been exhausted. But if all the conditions which I believe would provide the case for a just war are met - namely that less violent options have been exhausted first, that it reduces the sum total of violence in the world, improves the lives of the oppressed, does not replace one form of oppression with another and has a high chance of success - then it seems to me that it would be right to seek to topple Mr Hussein by military means.” (Email, November 26, 2002)We asked him if he thought Iraq was a special case to be singled out for this kind of treatment. He replied:"I do not believe that Iraq is a special case, or, rather, I do not believe that it is any more special than a number of other cases." (Email, November 27, 2002)So why single out Iraq, just then, when the British and American governments were clearly intent on attacking Iraq? He replied:"... why did I write that column about Iraq, rather than about Burma or West Papua? The answer is that Iraq is the issue over which the ideological battles of the moment are being fought. Yes, of course the reason for this is that the hawks in the US have put it on the agenda." (Email, December 3, 2002)The elusive but key truth is that mainstream politics and media have an astonishing capacity to make certain issues seem particularly real and important while consigning others to oblivion. To criticise the actions of the Iranian state, for example, is to have a voice - our words are likely to matter, they may well be heard; they can lead to discussion and even action. To criticise the actions of a government of marginal media interest is to be a voice in the wilderness - we might as well be muttering to ourselves in the bath. The temptation for a professional journalist is to be 'relevant', to accept mainstream parameters of debate, and to ignore the costs of his or her actions.By late 2002, establishment propaganda had made the need to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein’s regime seem real, urgent and important - Monbiot was swept along in the wake of that propaganda. Something similar appears to be happening again, now, over Iran.On December 18, we analysed the UK national press over the last 20 years searching for ‘gay rights’ and ‘Iran’. We found 79 mentions - 56 of these have been since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq:2007 - 142006 - 92005 - 92004 - 192003 - 6 (5 post-invasion, 1 pre-invasion)2002 - 22001 - 32000 - 11999 - 11998 - 21997 - 21996 - 11995 - 11994 - 51992 - 11989 - 11988 - 2Following the invasion, Iran took the place of Iraq as the West’s official enemy - it was the ideal scapegoat for the catastrophic occupation and a suitable device for maintaining the traditional fear of foreign ‘threats’.We found a similar pattern when searching for the terms ’Taliban’ and ‘women’s rights’. Since February 1995, there have been 56 mentions in the Guardian. Of these, 36 have appeared since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Following the September 11 attacks, there was the same number of mentions (nine) in the last three and a half months of that year as there had been in the previous three years combined. 90% of the mentions in 2001 occurred after 9-11.US Spies Confound The WarmongersJust two weeks after Monbiot’s comments on Iran, his own newspaper covered the latest report by the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which summarises the work of the 16 American intelligence agencies. The report, ‘Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,’ disclosed that Iran has +not+ been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years:"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.” (Ewen MacAskill, ‘US spies give shock verdict on Iran threat: Intelligence agencies say Tehran halted weapons programme in 2003,’ The Guardian, December 4, 2007)The report concluded: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme." (Ibid) The programme had not been restarted as of the middle of this year.Other evidence challenges the claim that Iran is supplying sophisticated weaponry to Iraqi insurgents. In May, the Guardian devoted an entire front page column to anonymous US military sources who insisted:"Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq and it's a very dangerous course for them to be following. They are already committing daily acts of war against US and British forces." (Simon Tisdall, 'Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq,’ The Guardian, May 22, 2007. You can see the front page here: www.medialens.org/alerts/07/screenshots/guardian_070522_cover.jpg)Journalists have long taken for granted that Iran is smuggling advanced roadside bombs, known as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), into Iraq. However, in October, historian and security analyst Gareth Porter described on Inter Press Service how the US military command had accused Iran last January of providing EFPs despite knowing that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years. By late 2005, the British military had found clear evidence that Iraqi Shiites were manufacturing their own EFPs.The US command also had substantial evidence that the Iraqi Mahdi army had received EFP technology and training on how to use it from Hezbollah rather than Iran. In November 2006, a senior intelligence official told the New York Times and CNN that Hezbollah had trained as many as 2,000 Mahdi army fighters in Lebanon. According to British expert Michael Knights, writing in Jane's Intelligence Review last year, the earliest EFPs appearing in Iraq in 2004 were probably constructed by Hezbollah specialists. Porter noted that British and US officials have long known that the EFPs being used in Iraq closely resemble weapons used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in Southern Lebanon.Despite all of this, Porter observed, the US command, operating under close White House supervision, “chose to deny these facts in making the dramatic accusation that became the main rationale for the present aggressive US stance toward Iran”. (Porter, ‘U.S. Military Ignored Evidence of Iraqi-Made EFPs,’ IPS, October 25, 2007; http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39810)And so, while the media continue to capitalise on any excuse to promote a “clash of civilisations” between the West and “militant Islam”, it remains a remarkable fact that the ‘threats’ faced are mostly invented. Much of the actual violence against the West has been, and will continue to be, in retaliation for grave Western crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere consuming literally millions of lives.The simplest way for the West to bring its “war on terror” to a successful conclusion would be for it to stop waging war and to renounce terrorism.SUGGESTED ACTIONThe goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.Write to Melanie PhillipsEmail: m.phillips@dailymail.co.ukWrite to George MonbiotEmail: g.monbiot@zetnet.co.ukPlease send a copy of your emails to usEmail: editor@medialens.org