Who's counting
Those of us who warned that the illegal adventurism into Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom was likely to fall apart must now begin to face up to answering the question the Prime Minister batted back to Charlie Kennedy at PMQ's last week. Are the Iraqis minus Saddam are better off now than they would have been had the UK/US followed the UN route, which may have allowed the dictator to remain in power? It's about time we examined a cost/benefit analysis of the decision. According to Iraq body count, http://www.iraqbodycount.net/, civilian deaths, since the war started, now exceed 11,000. There is no record of Iraqi military deaths and no record of Iraqi civilian injuries. Coalition fatalities have reached 910, with, according to the US Department of Defense, 4327 recorded as "wounded in action". I can find no record of other coalition wounded. Iraq's infrastructure has been flattened. Even today, over a year after Bush declared the war won, most of the Iraqi people still do not have regular supplies of clean water and electricity. And although we are told that schools are open, many of the parents are too frightened that their children will be kidnapped to let them attend those schools. Oil production, which was to finance the rebuilding, has hardly recovered to pre-war levels. Western firms engaged in large rebuilding projects are leaving the country. BP has just pulled out their staff. Even with 150, 000 troops and an unknown number of mercenaries, Iraq is a state that resembles a failed state. The streets are not safe. That is unlikely to change on the 1st July. Is the world outside any safer? According to the Institute of Strategic Studies more terrorists have been recruited. Iraq, a state without Al Qaida,is now becoming a training ground for those terrorists who left Afghanistan. Moderate Islamic states- Egypt and Jordan- see their own extreme Islamists become more threatening. Saudi Arabia with the majority of its population under 25 and unemployed must look towards the future with real concern. t
posted by Tony @ Tuesday, June 01, 2004
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