War Spending

Eric Umansky at Pro Publica has assembled some cool graphics on the fiscal cost of the Iraq war. As you can see below, the inflation adjusted dollar cost has been enormous:

However, I don't think you can understand the politics of the war without understanding that in relation to the size of the American economy, Iraq has been small potatoes by historical standards:

A ton of money has been spent on the war, but compared to other wars the impact of this one on the typical American who's not actually serving has been relatively small. Meanwhile, though, note the mismatch between spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. At the moment, a debate is going on about whether sending more troops to Afghanistan today would help matters and I'm not 100 percent sure what I think of that. I am, however, pretty certain that if the Bush administration had followed up the brief deposing of the Taliban with a massive commitment to rebuilding the country equal to, say, half of what they spent on Iraq, that that would have made a difference.

America promised a robust effort to make sure that the war improved the lives of ordinary Afghans. And while we've certainly done some work along those lines, the comparative budgets of Iraq and Afghanistan show where our national priorities were, and they weren't on living up to the commitments Bush made. It

Comments

Two points. First, apolitical: these graphics are *not* cool, they are confusing and should be discouraged in favor of ones that convey useful information. A bar graph would do the trick- these circles are impossible to compare. Political point: the study apparently does not include expenses related to veterans' benefits, which are particularly high for the Iraq war. Thousands of vets are surviving injuries that would have killed them years ago, and we will be paying for their care for several decades. For this and other reasons, Nobel-prize winning economist Stiglitz estimates the true cost of the war at $3 trillion, compared to the $800 billion in this study.

Posted by :Laurence Passmore | August 1, 2008 12:45 PM

Yes, the graphics are not that cool. Using circles makes the Iraq war look much more expensive than it really is, compared to WW2 --- there's a tendency to compare diameters instead of areas. I can see why he did it that way, though: if you use a bar graph, the cost of the Iraq war as a percentage of the economy would barely be visible at all.

Posted by pedant | August 1, 2008 1:08 PM

I really like the real cost equivalence between the Iraq war and the Mexican war, both controversial wars of choice that didn't go well by some standards. Though the Mexican war did have the long-term effect of aggrandizing the US, at the cost of pissing off elite Mexicans for more than a century. And it feeds into the Obama as Lincoln theme, in a good way.

BTW, the Mexican war was the US war with the highest desertion rate.

Posted by stefan | August 1, 2008 1:11 PM

Yes, the graphics are not that cool. Using circles makes the Iraq war look much more expensive than it really is, compared to WW2 --- there's a tendency to compare diameters instead of areas. I can see why he did it that way, though: if you use a bar graph, the cost of the Iraq war as a percentage of the economy would barely be visible at all.

Posted by pedant | August 1, 2008 1:13 PM

Yes, the graphics are not that cool. Using circles makes the Iraq war look much more expensive than it really is, compared to WW2 --- there's a tendency to compare diameters instead of areas. I can see why he did it that way, though: if you use a bar graph, the cost of the Iraq war as a percentage of the economy would barely be visible at all.

Posted by pedant | August 1, 2008 1:19 PM

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think the US
has only appropriated about $20B to 'rebuild
Iraq.' All the supplemental appropriations have
been for the Defense dept or to build US embassy
or bases. I.e. to spend money on US contractors.

I got this from reading the Brooking Inst.
Iraq update pdf's.

If the US has sent more or spent more, I would be curious to know.

Posted by catclub | August 1, 2008 1:20 PM

Interesting, but I tend to think of Iraq spending in terms of what else could have been bought with the money.

For example, there's a story on MIT's website today (sorry, can't link it here) reporting that scientists at MIT have developed a revolutionary solar energy process. Their research was funded by a grant of $10m from a private family. Imagine what similar kinds of discoveries could be accomplished with a trillion dollars or so.

Posted by hiphoplawyer | August 1, 2008 1:24 PM

Using circles makes the Iraq war look much more expensive than it really is, compared to WW2.

Huh? How do you figure? In the first set, we learn that Iraq has cost the US about 1/7th of what WWII cost in real terms. And it looks to my eyes like the WWII circle is indeed about seven times larger than the Iraq circle. A similarly accurate dynamic appears to be in effect for the cost-of-war-in-terms-of-GDP circles.

I really like the real cost equivalence between the Iraq war and the Mexican war...

I think the most interesting comparison is between the Civil War and World War I (in GDP terms). The latter conflict wasn't anything near the scope of the former for the Unites States. American troops were involved in major combat operations for something like ten months in 1918. And yet World War I cost the country a higher percentage of its economic output to fight than the cataclysmic, apocalyptic, bloodfest of utter brutality and savagery known as the War Between the States.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 1:26 PM

These graphs fail to reveal what is otherwise being spent on "defense."

To a remarkable extent the Federal Government since 1940 - and particularly since 1990 - can be characterized as a military machine with other programs attached as window dressing.

The military does need an enemy to justify its existence, and every now and then an actual war to strut its stuff. Unfortunately, the Iraq War turned out not to be the "cakewalk" it had been advertised as being. But still, it had been intended as a high tech "shock and awe" P.R. extravaganza. See Bush's "Mission Accomplished" celebration.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | August 1, 2008 1:32 PM

"I think the most interesting comparison is between the Civil War and World War I (in GDP terms)."

I think this is, more than anything else, a reflection of the growth of the organization and capabilities of the state during this time. There simply wasn't the capability, in 1860, to sequester a large part of the output of the nation.

(Yeah, yeah, sure, all the libertarians can now take this as an excuse to tell us how it's all been downhill since the day of Abe Lincoln. You know what? You libertarians might want to go live in a place like Congo which has just undergone much the same experience of a nation incapable of mustering its resources because of the weakness of the state.)

Posted by Maynard Handley | August 1, 2008 1:36 PM

Political point: the study apparently does not include expenses related to veterans' benefits, which are particularly high for the Iraq war. Thousands of vets are surviving injuries that would have killed them years ago, and we will be paying for their care for several decades.

This is nonsense. The number of casualties, both dead and wounded, from the Iraq War is vastly smaller than for previous major wars. Vietnam had 150,000 wounded. Korea, 103,000. WWII, 670,000. Iraq, only 30,000. Yes, we can now prevent deaths from injuries that would previously have killed their victims (and that's a good thing, right?), but the total number of casualties is so low compared to other wars that the number of wounded Iraq War veterans is still vastly smaller than the corresponding number from previous conflicts.

Yes, the graphics are not that cool. Using circles makes the Iraq war look much more expensive than it really is, compared to WW2

Yes. As was no doubt the intent.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 1:37 PM

Duncan Kinder,

To a remarkable extent the Federal Government since 1940 - and particularly since 1990 - can be characterized as a military machine with other programs attached as window dressing.

Er, post-WWII military spending as a share of total federal spending peaked in the early 1950s and has been in long-term decline since then. This decline has continued since 1990.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 1:46 PM

In inflation adjusted dollars the Iraq war costs on the same order of magnitude as WWII (pace everyone's comments about the graphics being misleading). However as a percentage of economic output, Iraq costs

Of course, the discrepancy reflects the growth of the economy since WWII -- or so we would be told.

But how much of the discrepancy really is a function of inflation statistics not really capturing the true rate of inflation?

Posted by DAS | August 1, 2008 1:47 PM

It's not a very good visual representation (and I'm not sure the data are correct), but it's an O.K. approximation of the relationships, except...

If you wanted to make a very good showing of something like "relative impact on society/politics" you'd have to include relative wounded/killed numbers, enemy wounded/killed (and both sets in absolute and relative to respective populations)--and show what kind of marginal effect each of those numbers had on the society at the time, across a basket of social/economic/political goods.

In that instance, the GWOT/Iraq War are, in fact, very small potatoes compared to any other major war in which the U.S. has engaged (with the exception of the Persian Gulf War--which was "bigger" in terms of cost/unit of time and in terms of troops, but had fewer casualties and was much, much shorter).

Of course, not sure what saying this means, except to say, evidently, that if you plan your gravely-mistaken wars to be just small enough, the population won't riot in the streets... which is political wisdom you could have gotten from playing Civilization III for a long weekend.

Posted by minnesotaj | August 1, 2008 1:56 PM

I don't have a problem myself with the whole circles-versus-bars thing, though if some people find bars more intuitive it'd be dumb to use circles and cause them problems unnecessarily.

But I would heartily endorse Laurence Passmore's comment that the Iraq cost to date is incomplete (we're still there) and ignores a huge coming cost in veterans' care. I'd also add re-equipment and re-training costs, which are also enormous (and are included in the Stiglitz estimate Laurence cites).

Some of those costs, like the veterans' benefits, may not be completely germane to this comparison, as I don't know if they were included in the other wars' costs - though this wouldn't make them quite moot, as the costs are real and we're rightly going to be providing much more and much more expensive benefits than we did after, say, the Civil War. Also note that the Iraq war gets huge subsidies compared to many wars because it was done using existing training and equipment to a large degree, and we've been using that equipment up. By comparison, other wars involved huge expansions of the military, with procurement of new equipment, rather than using pre-existing standing armies and equipment stockpiles. Those costs are still to come for Iraq.

Posted by Warren Terra | August 1, 2008 1:59 PM

Some of those costs, like the veterans' benefits, may not be completely germane to this comparison, as I don't know if they were included in the other wars' costs

They weren't, so you can't add them to the cost of the Iraq War but not the other wars.

- though this wouldn't make them quite moot, as the costs are real and we're rightly going to be providing much more and much more expensive benefits than we did after, say, the Civil War.

And we also provided much more and much more expensive benefits to veterans of WWII than we did to Civil War veterans. That historical trend is a matter of increasing wealth and advances in medical science and technology. It can't be attributed to the war. We also provide much more and much more expensive benefits to the population in general.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 2:18 PM

To a remarkable extent the Federal Government since 1940 - and particularly since 1990 - can be characterized as a military machine with other programs attached as window dressing.

You've got to be kidding. Far more apt is Krugman's famous aphorism describing the federal government as a huge insurance company with a sideline in national defense.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 2:19 PM

...in inflation adjusted dollars the Iraq war costs on the same order of magnitude as WWII...

DAS: No. This is entirely wrong. The graphs Matthew gives us inflation-adjusted numbers, and in inflation-adjusted terms, America's bill for the Second World War exceeded by a factor of roughly seven what the Iraq has cost so far. In portion of GDP terms, the difference has been a factor of about thirty-five.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 2:26 PM

Er, post-WWII military spending as a share of total federal spending peaked in the early 1950s and has been in long-term decline since then. This decline has continued since 1990.

Logical fallacy.

The level of Defense Spending in the United States since WWII is abnormal both by historical standards since 1789 as well as by spending levels of other nations.

To cite only US spending levels since 1945 as a measure of anything - instead of contrasting those levels with historical and worldwide norms - is a distortion.

It would be rather like arguing that players on some NBA team are not unusually large because - on the average - they are shorter than other professional basketball players.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | August 1, 2008 2:36 PM

Jasper,

If we were considering war costs on the sort of logarithmic scale as, say, earthquakes, you'd probably say that WWII and Iraq were both, so to speak, magnitude 9 earthquakes (to within one significant figure) ... this is what I meant by "same order of magnitude" (especially considering that we ain't done paying for the Iraq war yet).

OTOH, the difference in percent GDP is not a factor of 7 but a factor of 5*7. There is a discrepancy here ... which would generally be attributable to economic growth.

My question is -- do we really have 5x the economy we did in those glory days (at least according to certain conservatives) of the post-war era? Or are the inflation #s used to make the inflation adjustment suspect? Or is the issue one of econometrics (how do you measure growth vs. inflation? how do you even define what you attribute to growth vs. inflation? if an economy grows X% in un-inflation adjusted $s, how do you know what amount is due to real growth and what amount is due to your yard-stick shrinking -- i.e. inflation -- if you really only have your yardstick to measure things? especially considering that your "standard basket of goods" is itself subject to changes in "real" value due to technology changes, etc.)?

My point is that there is potentially a buried story in these plots ... let's not continue to bury it.

Posted by DAS | August 1, 2008 2:38 PM

Mixner:
"...the total number of casualties is so low compared to other wars that the number of wounded Iraq War veterans is still vastly smaller than the corresponding number from previous conflicts."

The total number may be lower, but the injuries are often much more serious, as improved medical care keeps more seriously injured soldiers alive. Of course that's a good thing, but what's relevant here is that this represents an extra cost unaccounted for in the study (not to mention that the per capita cost of care in general is vastly more expensive today than in the 1960's). I wish I had more numbers to back this up, but can only recommend the Stiglitz book.

Posted by Laurence Passmore | August 1, 2008 2:41 PM

Er, post-WWII military spending as a share of total federal spending peaked in the early 1950s and has been in long-term decline since then. This decline has continued since 1990.

Logical fallacy.

The level of Defense Spending in the United States since WWII is abnormal both by historical standards since 1789 as well as by spending levels of other nations.

To cite only US spending levels since 1945 as a measure of anything - instead of contrasting those levels with historical and worldwide norms - is a distortion.

It would be rather like arguing that players on some NBA team are not unusually large because - on the average - they are shorter than other professional basketball players.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | August 1, 2008 2:52 PM

"My question is -- do we really have 5x the economy we did in those glory days (at least according to certain conservatives) of the post-war era? "

Well the US population has almost tripled since 1945, so that already accounts for the vast bulk of the 5x increase.

Posted by Maynard Handley | August 1, 2008 2:54 PM

If we were considering war costs on the sort of logarithmic scale as, say, earthquakes, you'd probably say that WWII and Iraq were both, so to speak, magnitude 9 earthquakes (to within one significant figure) ... this is what I meant by "same order of magnitude"

DAS: You've genuinely got me mystified. In WWII the US military mobilized, what, twelve, maybe fifteen million people? Automakers shut down production of cars to switch to tanks. That's right, the government wouldn't allow Ford to sell you a car. Basic food stuffs and fuel were rationed. Vast American armies were engaged in epic battles in far-flung corners of the world. The government involved itself in national economic life on a scale never before contemplated and not witnessed since. The entire society was reorganized as a war-fighting machine, and this process was accompanied by social upheavals and unparalleled advances in technology. And several hundred thousand Americans were killed.

World War II -- one of history's great watersheds -- transformed America. The Iraq War has not. The two conflict are of an entirely different scale.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 2:56 PM

Well the US population has almost tripled since 1945, so that already accounts for the vast bulk of the 5x increase.

The population is only about double what it was in 1945, and the real increase in the expansion of GDP is closer to seven than five. So, inflation-adjusted per capita GDP in 2008 is three to four times what it was at the end of the war. America really is a lot richer now than in 1945.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 3:03 PM

I'm surprised no one has pointed this out (even in the little back-and-forth about veteran's benefits), but I think there is a much larger uncounted cost when we compare Iraq to WWII:

The pre-WWII military was very small and cheap, and as a result the buildup for that effort was massive and (this is the important part) ATTRIBUTED TO THE WAR. Thus, that really big circle would include nearly all of our War Department budget from 1941-1945.

Nowadays, however, we have a very large, expensive military, with a pre-Iraq budget of nearly half-a-billion $ per year. That isn't counted at all in the Iraq (or Afghan) War figures, despite the fact that the planes, tanks, ships, etc, bought with this money are used extensively (in some cases primarily) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, the figures in those circles are only the SUPPLEMENTAL spending associated with operations in those countries.

I think the more appropriate comparison would be to lump Iraq and Afghanistan together with all our Defense spending from 2002-present, which is about $4 billion, and compare THAT to WWII (since it's not like we're breaking up the European and Pacific Theaters of that war). It might still be less in real dollars, but it would be close, and not orders of magnitude less in %GDP.

Posted by Jesse | August 1, 2008 3:07 PM

Population now is 301 mill.
Population in 1940 was 132 mill
But population in 1950 was already 151 mill (1/2)

My bad --- when I posted I quickly did 130 mill as a 1/3rd of 300 mill, but of course it's a third of 400 mill.

So that gives a factor of 2.5x in per-capita numbers.

(It could be argued, of course, that in fact the number is lower because a whole lot of natural capital has been burned since 1945, but going down that path raises all sorts of problematic issues.)

Posted by Maynard Handley | August 1, 2008 3:13 PM

Note: that should be $4 trillion, not billion, in my comment above, for the total cost of Defense from 2002-present.

Posted by Jesse | August 1, 2008 3:15 PM

Note: that should be $4 trillion, not billion, in my comment above, for the total cost of Defense from 2002-present.

Posted by Jesse | August 1, 2008 3:17 PM

It might still be less in real dollars, but it would be close, and not orders of magnitude less in %GDP.

No it wouldn't be close. Even lumping in non DOD items (like DOE spending that supports our nuclear arsenal) you'd struggle to describe US total defense spending this decade as much over 5% or 6% of GDP. Fighting World War II required a vastly higher share of national output -- a difference of at least six or seven orders of magnitude.

Posted by Jasper | August 1, 2008 3:26 PM

Between Jesse and Jasper this thread has definitely jumped the mathematical shark...

Meantime, I think the most important thing to think about is that all of these calculations have some role in explaining the lack of protest/resistance in the U.S. to the war, and even less role in explaining why the war was/is a really, really bad idea and exceptionally wrong thing to have started/to continue (unless you happen to be a very limited-imagination act consequentialist).

Posted by minnesotaj | August 1, 2008 3:47 PM

Well, I wasn't aware that one comment pointing out Defense spending has been roughly 6 times higher from 2002-present than this chart acknowledges would constitute jumping some sort of shark. Sorry about that.

In fact, I would suggest that the fact that about 80% of our military spending is now considered "normal" or "overhead" and only 20% is attributed to the actual wars we're using our military to fight may have a lot to do with the general lack of resistance to the perceived cost of the war.

And perhaps, now that I think about it, the real fiscal scandal here isn't the war at all - it's the other defense spending. I mean, if actually fighting the "transcendent challenge of our time" (in Iraq and Afghanistan) has cost us somewhere south of $1 trillion since 2002, putting aside whether you support that fight or not, then what the hell have we spent the other $3 trillion defense dollars on? I know the answer, of course (ships, planes, missile systems, and all the soldiers, sailors and marines not on deployment), but isn't it worth somebody asking the question?

I mean, even if that is "only" 5% of our entire national gross domestic product, we could still have bought a lot of other stuff with that cash.

Posted by Jesse | August 1, 2008 5:27 PM

Duncan Kinder,

Logical fallacy. The level of Defense Spending in the United States since WWII is abnormal both by historical standards since 1789 as well as by spending levels of other nations. To cite only US spending levels since 1945 as a measure of anything - instead of contrasting those levels with historical and worldwide norms - is a distortion.

Now you're moving the goalposts. The claim of yours I rebutted is false with respect to military spending since 1940, and even more false with respect to spending since 1990. Military spending as a share of total federal spending continued to fall after 1990. As someone else said, contrary to your ridiculous assertion that "the Federal Government since 1940 - and particularly since 1990 - can be characterized as a military machine with other programs attached as window dressing," federal spending is dominated by social welfare spending. Military spending is only a small fraction of total federal spending.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 5:29 PM

Jesse,

I agree with your last comment (for the most part), but to be clear, you said "six or seven orders of magnitude," which would be 1M to 10M times as big.

Mixner,

"Military spending is only a small fraction of total federal spending" is clearly a false statement, as the most conservative estimate (the White House's) puts it at greater than 20% of the budget--an ~ 25% increase above what it was during the Clinton administration, with only HHS spending surpassing it as a gross line item.

Posted by minnesotaj | August 1, 2008 5:42 PM

The total number may be lower, but the injuries are often much more serious, as improved medical care keeps more seriously injured soldiers alive. Of course that's a good thing, but what's relevant here is that this represents an extra cost unaccounted for in the study (not to mention that the per capita cost of care in general is vastly more expensive today than in the 1960's). I wish I had more numbers to back this up, but can only recommend the Stiglitz book.

Your claim here doesn't make much sense. The fact that, due to medical advances, we can prevent soldiers from dying of injuries that would have been fatal in earlier wars obviously doesn't mean that the on-going costs of providing health care for wounded veterans of Iraq is higher than for wounded veterans of previous wars (adjusted for the general rate of health care inflation). Vietnam produced five times as many wounded veterans as the Iraq War. WWII produced more than 20 times as many wounded veterans. So accounting for these costs would likely reduce the relative cost of the Iraq War in comparison to those earlier conflicts, not increase it. And when we consider the economic cost attributable to combat deaths, the difference is even greater, because so many more soldiers died in Vietnam and WWII than in Iraq.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 5:51 PM

"minnesotaj"

as the most conservative estimate (the White House's) puts it at greater than 20% of the budget

I certainly think 20% qualifies as "a small fraction."

--an ~ 25% increase above what it was during the Clinton administration,

Defense spending as a share of the budget and GDP was at 50+ year lows during the Clinton years. It has increased only slightly since then. Military spending is still very low by historical standards. Obama and McCain both want to increase military spending.

Posted by Mixner | August 1, 2008 5:58 PM

I am, however, pretty certain that if the Bush administration had followed up the brief deposing of the Taliban with a massive commitment to rebuilding the country equal to, say, half of what they spent on Iraq, that that would have made a difference.

Didn't we make "a massive commitment to rebuilding the country" in Iraq? Is there any reason to believe it would have worked out better in Afghanistan than it has in Iraq?

I guess those are questions only a dirty fucking hippie would ask.

Posted by yave begnet | August 1, 2008 6:06 PM

Mixner ignores the massive casualties on the part of the Iraqis because, in the mind of a sub-litterate moron like Mixner, they don't count.

Posted by Not As Stupid As Mixner | August 1, 2008 6:10 PM

Enemy military and civilian losses in Vietnam and WWII were also vastly greater than in Iraq. Not as stupid might realize this if he weren't, well, insane. And an imbecile.

Posted by not-as-stupid is insane | August 1, 2008 6:34 PM

Shorter Mixner: "So we killed a million people for oil companies and war profiteering. So what?"

These sorts of comparisons are obviously utterly irrelevant. They called WWII a "World War" for a REASON, morons, namely that a significant number of major world nations were involved in it. Iraq is one small country being attacked by a superpower. And we're supposed to be concerned about whether that small country has damaged the US economy and military as much as a "World War"?

Look, stupids. The problem has to be addressed in terms of itself, not some problem fifty years ago. The bottom line of the Iraq war is that the US has been fighting for longer than WWII and HAS NOT WON. Worse, in doing so, the US started a process which has resulted in over a million deaths, the displacement of twenty percent of a country's population, destabilized a region, and cost the US what little credibility it ever had in the region.

And all this so some oil companies and some military contractors who bribed the right politicians could make a buck? All this so that an even TINIER country - Israel - could feel it could flex its muscles in the region?

Comparisons to WWII are ludicrous. Matt taking any of this seriously is just providing cover for morons like Mixner and Powell.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 1, 2008 7:17 PM

With their usual incoherent teen-aged angst and spittle-flecked ranting, "stupid" and The Incredible Hack once again go to bat for their hero, Saddam Hussein, who was minding his own business invading the neighbors, nerve-gassing the minorities, committing genocide, undermining the UN, and disrupting the world economy when he was maliciously attacked unilaterally by the US, for no good reason.

Any time there's a discussion that might be fact based, these social handicaps come along and start insulting people, and in the process everyone's intelligence. Why is this kind of abusive misbehavior tolerated here?

Posted by robert powell | August 2, 2008 11:19 AM

Robert, in 2003 Saddam Hussein wasn't "invading his neighbors," "nerve gassing the minorities," or "committing genocide." I suppose you could make the case that he was in some trival way "undermining the UN" or "disrupting the world economy," but those aren't serious complaints against Hussein either.

The suggestion that Saddam was somehow undermining the United Nations is particularly strange given the behavior of the United States at the time. After failing to get UN approval for the invasion, the United States invaded Iraq anyway, along with a number of other countries, in violation of our obligations as singatories of the UN charter. Obviously the UN survived, but that was a bigger challenge to the UN's legitimacy than anything Saddam either did or could have done.

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | August 2, 2008 1:45 PM

Saddam Hussein was actively doing all of those things when we went to war with Iraq in 1991. Our subsequent efforts to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion without actually taking the trouble to win cost about $70 billion a year deploying tens of thousands of troops to enforce the embargo, itself an act of war that killed about a million innocent Iraqis while tightening the regime's grip on power and enriching its collaborators, with ongoing combat operations. By 2003 a climbdown would have left the sanctions destroyed, with Total and Rosneft already holding a signed deal to go to work resuscitating the regime's finances.

It is popular but baseless fiction that it was the US rather than the Iraqi regime that was undermining the UN. Iraq comprehensively violated the terms of the ceasefire, making any additional UN action redundant. Nevertheless we obtained another 16 Chapter VII Resolutions, all of which were violated by Iraq. The conclusion of the duly appointed legal authorities of most of the world's important democracies, supported by their elected governments, was that the violations revived the original authorization for the use of force and agreed with the legality of the invasion. It's a matter of historical record.

A world body that couldn't enforce its resolutions was a contributing factor to WWII. Chapter VII authority from the Security Council was designed to address that flaw. People who say that it was "illegal" to enforce the Resolutions on Iraq are not friends of the United Nations. Robert Mugabe, Saddam Hussein, etc, but not the UN.

Posted by robert powell | August 2, 2008 4:13 PM

Shorter Powell: We killed another million Iraqis so we could stop killing a million Iraqis with sanctions.

Moron.

Powell likes to think that Iraq's history started in 1991. He never addresses the '80's when the US heartily supported Saddam - or for that matter, the earlier decades when the CIA actually helped Saddam into power.

The bottom line is that the UN never validated the invasion, and Kofi Annan - not to mention hundreds of international law scholars the world over - denounced the invasion as illegal. Even the British Law Lord was originally convinced the invasion was illegal, until he was browbeaten by Brit politicians into agreeing since it already was a done deal.

Powell is a liar. The only thing that is a matter of historical record is that the invasion was illegal and a fucking disaster and remains a fucking disaster.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 2, 2008 6:30 PM

Typical of the childish ignorance that imagines HE knows better what Lord Goldsmith "was originally convinced of" than Goldsmith himself, Hack continues to parrot patent nonsense cut and pasted from wacko websites. Ditto the standard canard that Saddam was a creature of US foreign policy.

Ba'athist Iraq was a Soviet client state, which for most of its existence received about as much "support" as East Germany, with is to say zero. At the point it looked like Iraq was about to lose the war it started with Khomeini's Iran, we supplied Saddam with some spare parts, ammunition, satellite imagery of Iranian positions, and a photo op with Rumsfeld. Pretty small potatoes compared to the tens of billions of dollars worth of Warsaw Pact equipment ranging from small arms and radar to tanks, artillery, and the latest jet aircraft supplied by the Soviet Union and its successors. In all, from the late Sixties until 1990, the US supplied about four-tenths of one percent of Iraq's foreign military assistance according to the Stockholm Institute for Peace, which tracks military spending worldwide.

Invading Iraq with insufficient troops to stabilize it was a huge error. Attempting to manage the situation with a FEMA-like gang of College Republican hacks, Abu Ghraib, etc. made it worse. There are plenty of things to criticize the US government for without having to resort to propaganda and lies from anti-American, pro-terrorist sources.

Posted by robert powell | August 3, 2008 3:40 AM

Well of course WWII was much more expensive than Iraq...there is a reason it starts with "World." Seriously, this quibble comparing previous wars to this one is about the most useless exercise I've seen on this site. You can only go so far back before the comparisons becomes useless due to the "times" being really, really different. Besides, this was more of an occupation than a war anyway. Didn't the war end like 2 weeks after we landed there? I would like to see comparisons of post-war occupation costs more than these.

Posted by Adrock | August 5, 2008 12:19 PM

Duncan

To a remarkable extent the Federal Government since 1940 - and particularly since 1990 - can be characterized as a military machine with other programs attached as window dressing.

To put it plainly that's nonense. Since 1943 or 1944 the portion of the government's expenditure that has gone to defense has decreased to a very great extent, and since 1990 this trend has largely continued.

It would be more accurate to say that the federal government has become, or at least is in the process of becoming, a system for processing entitlement program checks, with everything else becoming window dressing. Even that would be an exaggeration (at least for now), since while over half of federal government spending is for entitlement programs, its not anything like a vast majority of the spending.

But while its an exaggeration, to the point of not really being true, its far closer to being true than your statement.

Posted by Tim Fowler | August 13, 2008 11:42 AM

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