'Mission Accomplished' Was 12 Years Ago Today. What's Been The Cost Since Then?

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush delivered a now-infamous speech aboard an aircraft carrier in which he declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" and that "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." That speech, given less than two months after the U.S. initiated combat operations in Iraq, has been derisively labeled "Mission Accomplished" after the banner used as a backdrop.

Report Shows US Invasion, Occupation of Iraq Left 1 Million Dead

A recently published report has revealed that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1 million Iraqis, which is 5 percent of the total population of the country. The report also tallies hundreds of thousands of casualties in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Authors of the report, titled "Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the 'War on Terror,'" have told Truthout that other casualty reports, like the often-quoted Iraq Body Count (IBC), which has a high-end estimate at the time of this writing of 154,563, are far too low in their estimates, and that the real numbers reach "genocidal dimensions."

Cost of Iraq and NATO reassurance missions ‘classified’ in coming budget: DND

Parliament may have approved a year-long extension to the country’s combat mission in Iraq and Syria, but the Harper government is once again refusing to say how much it will cost taxpayers.

Nor will it reveal the estimated pricetag for upcoming involvement in NATO’s reassurance operations in eastern Europe.

Late Tuesday, the federal Treasury Board tabled its reports on plans and priorities for the coming fiscal year, which is a rough guidebook to upcoming departmental spending.

The costs of Operation Impact and Operation Reassurance are classified, according to National Defence.

Dave Perry of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute says he’s astonished.

Original Article
Source: nationalnewswatch.com/
Author:  Will LeRoy 

The Lethal Legacy of the Vietnam War

On a mild, sunny morning last November, Chuck Searcy and I drove out along a spur of the old Ho Chi Minh Trail to the former Marine base at Khe Sanh, which sits in a bowl of green mountains and coffee plantations in Vietnam’s Quang Tri province, hard on the border with Laos. The seventy-seven-day siege of Khe Sanh in early 1968, coinciding with the Tet Offensive, was the longest battle of what Vietnamese call the American War and a pivotal event in the conflict. By the off-kilter logic of Saigon and Washington, unleashing enough technology and firepower to produce a ten-to-one kill ratio was a metric of success, but the televised carnage of 1968, in which 16,592 Americans died, was too much for audiences back home. After Tet and Khe Sanh, the war was no longer America’s to win, only to avoid losing.

Civilian Casualties In Afghanistan Topped 10,000 In 2014, UN Reports

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The number of civilians killed or wounded in fighting in Afghanistan climbed by 22 percent in 2014 to reach the highest level in five years as foreign troops concluded their combat mission, the U.N. said in an annual report released Wednesday.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan documented 10,548 civilian casualties in 2014, the highest number in a single year since 2009. They include 3,699 civilian deaths, up 25 percent from 2013.

Despite Kobani's Liberation From ISIS, Many Syrians See Little To Celebrate

GAZIANTEP, Turkey -- Syrians say there's little to celebrate even if Kurdish fighters, aided by a barrage of U.S.-led airstrikes, have successfully driven the Islamic State from the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria earlier this week.

Sure, the U.S. has applauded the news, and Kurds across the border in Turkey danced in the streets. But the regime of President Bashar Assad continues to drop barrel bombs on its citizens –- without any meaningful U.S. response -- and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, is tightening its grip elsewhere in Syria.

290 Heritage Sites Damaged By War In Syria

BEIRUT, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Satellite imagery indicate that 290 cultural heritage sites in Syria, whose history stretches back to the dawn of civilization, have been damaged by its ongoing civil war, the United Nations' training and research arm (UNITAR) said on Tuesday.

Syria's heritage spans the great empires of the Middle East but cultural sites and buildings around the country, such as Aleppo's Umayyad Mosque, have been looted, damaged or destroyed in the three-year-old conflict.

$14 Million An Hour: War Costs Top $1.6 Trillion Since 9/11, Say Congressional Researchers

American taxpayers have shelled out roughly $1.6 trillion on war spending since 9/11, according to a new report from Congress’ nonpartisan research arm. That’s roughly $337 million a day -- or nearly a quarter million dollars a minute -- every single day for 13 years.

The $1.6 trillion estimate, which comes to $14 million per hour since 9/11, from the Congressional Research Service is up roughly half a trillion dollars from its 2010 estimate, which found that the post-9/11 military operations are second only to World War II in terms of financial cost.

Death Toll In Eastern Ukraine Up To 4,707: UN

GENEVA (AP) — Fighting in eastern Ukraine has killed at least at least 4,707 people since the conflict began in mid-April and more than a quarter of the recorded deaths have come since a much-ignored cease-fire, U.N. rights investigators said Monday.

A new report from the U.N. team in Ukraine says at least 1,357 of the fatalities have been recorded since the cease-fire began in early September, but the team noted that some of those deaths may have occurred before then.

UN Declares 2014 A Devastating Year For Millions Of Children

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The United Nations children's agency UNICEF declared 2014 a devastating year for children on Monday with as many as 15 million caught in conflicts in Central African Republic, Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and the Palestinian territories.

UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said the high number of crises meant many of them were quickly forgotten or failed to capture global headlines, such as in Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Globally, UNICEF said some 230 million children were living in countries and regions affected by armed conflict.

Budget watchdog rips DND for keeping cost of Iraq mission secret

Canada’s budget watchdog slammed defence officials Friday for refusing to divulge the cost of the Iraq combat mission.

In a succinct letter, Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Fréchette took aim at the deputy defence minister, Richard Fadden, for saying the military’s cost estimate for the six-month airstrike is a cabinet confidence.

“As you will be aware, cabinet confidence exists to allow for free and frank discussion of problems that come before Cabinet,” wrote Fréchette. “It does not, in this case, apply to the data provided to Cabinet.”

Entirely Predictable: The U.S. Is Leaving Afghanistan Worse Off Than Before

With very little fanfare and barely any major news coverage, U.S. Army units have begun leaving Afghanistan. The drawdown signals the wrapping up of what became—officially at least—the United States’ longest war. A few thousand American troops will stay indefinitely. And, says “Reena,” a spokeswoman for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), the U.S. is leaving Afghanistan worse off than when the Taliban was in power. This should come as no surprise, given that for decades the U.S. has refused to back anyone other than corrupt and criminal elements.

Opposition MPs want feds to release cost of military action against ISIS in Iraq

Opposition MPs say the federal government needs to make public its cost estimates for Canada’s military contributions to the fight against ISIS in Iraq.

On Oct. 17, Chief of defence Staff General Tom Lawson told reporters at a briefing that the cost estimates for Canada’s military contributions have been provided to Cabinet and will be made public in the “future.” Gen. Lawson said costs will be done “incrementally” and through the regular Parliamentary process and will not impact other operations, such as search and rescue.

The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons

The soldiers at the blast crater sensed something was wrong.

It was August 2008 near Taji, Iraq. They had just exploded a stack of old Iraqi artillery shells buried beside a murky lake. The blast, part of an effort to destroy munitions that could be used in makeshift bombs, uncovered more shells.

Two technicians assigned to dispose of munitions stepped into the hole. Lake water seeped in. One of them, Specialist Andrew T. Goldman, noticed a pungent odor, something, he said, he had never smelled before.
He lifted a shell. Oily paste oozed from a crack. “That doesn’t look like pond water,” said his team leader, Staff Sgt. Eric J. Duling.

Water is a weapon of war in Iraq and Syria

In May, Council of Canadians chairperson and Blue Planet Project founder Maude Barlowstated that water is increasingly and deliberately being used as a weapon of war. She said, "Water as a weapon of war is a strong argument to governments and the United Nations they must make real the human right to water and sanitation, regardless of other conflicts taking place."

In that IPS interview, "Barlow [said] the al-Assad government's denial of clean water is consistent with its history of using water to punish its enemies and reward its friends. In 2000, the Syrian regime deregulated land use and gave vast quantities of land and water to its wealthy allies, severely diminishing the water table and driving nearly one million small farmers and herders off the land, she added. Ironically and tragically, many of them migrated to Aleppo where they are being targeted again, said Barlow. ...[And] during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the Mesopotamian Marshes were drained, she said. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein drained them further during the 1990s in retribution against Shias who hid there and the Marsh Arabs (Ma'dan) who protected them, she pointed out."

Budget for Iraq mission could remain hidden for months

Members of Parliament are being asked to vote Monday on the government’s proposed combat mission in Iraq but it may be some time before Canadians know just how much the mission will cost taxpayers.

Asked by iPolitics how much is being budgeted for the six-month mission unveiled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper Friday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement avoided answering.

“I think that obviously we will have answers to that and they will be published in due course,” he said. “Obviously, this will be something that will be over and above the regular budget for the Canadian Forces.”

Soldiers, Don't Trust Canada to Bring You Home From Iraq Alive

There are 26 Special Forces soldiers in Iraq until at least October 5 acting as military advisors to the Iraqi military. I have worked with the Special Forces on two separate occasions and have friends that are members of this elite group of men and women. CSOR and JTF are some of the most trained forces on the planet and watching them work was among some of the highlights of my career. As I think back to being deployed to Afghanistan and times I spent working for these organizations, I am reminded of time when my platoon was fortunate enough to do a convoy dropping off supplies to the JTF. I can still remember dismounting and being told to go get a hot lunch at the mess. As I walked in the oppressive August heat I remember seeing the most built man I have ever seen riding a stationary bike in the sun. His beard down to his chest and the rapid pace he was pedaling did not match how easily he was breathing.

Life in the Ruins

The first advertisement released by Bashar al-Assad during this year’s Syrian presidential election campaign was tagged with the slogan Sawa, or “Together.” It proved to be a misguided choice for a plebiscite marred by widespread ballot stuffing, choreographed pro-Assad celebrations outside the polling stations, and no votes cast by Syrians in rebel-held territories throughout the country. For the incumbent, who won an improbable 89 percent of the vote, the election was a way to demonstrate to friends and foes that he has the wherewithal to survive a civil war now in its third year, no matter the cost—which thus far includes some 190,000 deaths (a third of them civilians, according to the United Kingdom–based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights) and the devastation of much of the country’s economy and infrastructure.

Activists, Journalists Killed In Spate Of Assassinations In Libya

CAIRO (AP) — Targeted killings in Libya over two days left 10 rights activists, journalists, and members of the security forces dead in the country's east, local security officials said Saturday.

Among the slain Thursday and Friday were two activist bloggers, and four current and former military and police officers. The officials said three other people who were targeted survived assassination attempts in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

The identity of the assailants was not immediately known. Islamic radical militias, however, have been blamed for frequent killings of secular activists, judges, moderate clerics, policemen and soldiers in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.

Libya is witnessing the worst bout of violence since the 2011 ouster of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: AP | By MARIAM RIZK

Gaza counts cost of war as more than 360 factories destroyed or damaged

Gaza's economy will take years to recover from the devastating impact of the war, in which more than 360 factories have been destroyed or badly damaged and thousands of acres of farmland ruined by tanks, shelling and air strikes, according to analysts.

Israeli air strikes on Gaza have resumed since a temporary ceasefire brokedown on Tuesday after rockets were fired from Gaza. The Israeli Defence Force said it launched air stikes on 20 sites on Friday morning and Gaza health officials said two Palestinians were killed in an attack on a farm.