The $1 Trillion War Fraud

Feb. 10, 2003: Iraq agrees to U.S. surveillance overflights

Seven years ago today, when the U.S. invasion of Iraq was already thoroughly planned (and less than 40 days from actual launch), some 60 weapons inspectors from two international agencies were already in place there and, in a further gesture of surrender, Saddam Hussein agreed to regular U-2 spy plane missions throughout Iraqi air space (you could look it up at This Week in Peace History).

To be forced to agree to the presence of international weapons inspectors and reconnaisance overflights is an act of capitulation, but the U.S. (with cover from 40 other countries) invaded anyway. Though examples of corporate media failure to perform the basic function of investigating and exposing the activities and pretensions of government abound, the persistent and enduring journalistic failure to report the truth about the Iraq War is an act of collusion similar to the "yellow journalism" tactics of William Randolph Hearst's New York Morning Journal, which diligently promoted the Spanish-American War.

In the upshot, the Iraq War, the third longest U.S. war ever (the Afghanistan War is longer, the Vietnam War longest), a product of the de facto alliance of duplicitous government, collaborating media and a rapacious military-industrial complex, has cost the country over $700 billion to date; that cost continues to rise at a rate exceeding $100,000 per minute (about the same rate as the Afghanistan War--to watch the cost of both wars rise, check out this web page of the National Priorities Project). Together, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds $1 trillion; about the amount an effective and urgently needed stimulus package would cost. It ought to be obvious that peace and economic justice are two sides of an ideal coin, but harder to arrive at when the media itself is not interested.