The brutal truth about the cost of the Iraq war…
We all know the second Iraq war of recent times was about oil. It wasn’t about overthrowing an evil dictator who had fallen out of favour and it wasn’t about seizing weapons of mass destruction. Frankly, the tangled interests of Western governments and related corporate interests wouldn’t be prepared to pay the exorbitant cost of achieving either of those goals. Oil however, well, that’s a different matter.
There’s been much discussion about how much the war has cost; maybe $500 billion to-date. It may possibly cost as much as $3 trillion. The original estimate was $50 billion and questioning this official line was a sackable offence.
The other oft discussed point is Iraq’s 115 billion barrels of oil yet to be pumped out of the ground. I’ve yet to find much conflation of these points but, with Western oil companies circling the spoils of war and the price of a barrel going up and up, maybe it’s worth highlighting that at today’s prices ($145) that oil is worth $16.68 trillion.
So you know what, if you don’t shed tears for human suffering and if when someone talks about ‘cost’ all you see are dollar signs; if all an election means to you is keeping the whole crumbling edifice of special interests on the road for a few more years then the occupation of Iraq is a resounding bloody success.
$500 billion spent. Over $16 trillion to make. You have to spend money to make money. In this case you spend taxpayers money and civilian lives then let the private sector reap the ‘rewards’. For our leaders, both government and corporate that cost is cheap at six times the price and more besides.




