Political Bunker

Oh, thank you great and mighty war machine!

CommonDreams - “Because of the war, the national deficit is $2 trillion higher,” Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, told me. “At 5 percent interest, that’s $100 billion a year, year after year after year - forever!”

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According to a report released in May 2007 by aid agency Save the Children, “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other country.”

The report, entitled State of the World’s Mothers 2007, said that some 122,000 Iraqi children - the equivalent of one in eight - died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first month of life.

Richard W. Behan at AlterNet - Only the Bush administration continues to natter about a bogus "War on Terror." Others are more candid:

* Republican Sen. Senator Charles Hagel: "People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs." (Speaking at Catholic University, Sept. 24, 2007)

It appears that the hundreds of U.S. diplomats that expressed their anger about the State Department's decision to make them take jobs in Iraq will no longer have to worry about a "potential death sentence."

BBC News - The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing nearly double the amount previously thought, according to a report by Democrats in the US Congress. They say "hidden costs" have pushed the total to about $1.5 trillion - nearly twice the requested $804bn. Higher oil prices, treating wounded veterans, and the cost to the economy of pulling reservists away from their jobs have been taken into account.

New York Times - As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.

Looks like BushCo is looking hard for any reason to start the war in Iran...

Guardian - Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is 'gold'. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards' alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force.

Guardian - Torture and "humanitarian war" are similar in many ways. Both involve the inflicting of violence in order to force a change of behaviour.

Julia Layton - Most CIA officials say water boarding is not torture, although many see it as a poor interrogation method because it scares the prisoner so much you can't trust anything he tells you. Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a POW during the Vietnam War, says water boarding is definitely a form of torture. Human rights groups agree unanimously that "simulated drowning," causing the prisoner to believe he is about to die, is undoubtedly a form of psychological torture.

"A majority of likely voters - 52 percent - would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53 percent believe it is likely that the U.S. will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the next presidential election" - read more at Zogby Iran War Poll