The Cost of Israel And US Wars

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This article is beyond anything in my experience. It is so full of data that it overwhelms me. It's too much to take in. Yet it does start with the 'USS Liberty', an issue that I Google every week. How demoralising it must be for US servicemen at the best of times, to have this issue fester away. The event was so similar to the start of the Vietnam War, as to be frightening, but the start of WWIII may have been the intent. Nearly happened.

I'm also struck by the number of US citizens serving in a foreign army. This is most extraordinary. And they get educational credits too. Can they serve in other foreign armies?

Quote by: The Cost of Israel And US Wars By Gideon Polya 21 July, 2005 http://www.countercurrents.org/us-polya210705.htm Notwithstanding the 1967 Israeli attack on the defenceless USS Liberty (34 deaths out of 206 US casualties), the US has continued to bank-roll Israel and the illegal Israeli occupation of Arab lands. Further, US support for Israel is intimately connected with the continuing US War on Muslims from Africa to Afghanistan. What has been the financial and human cost of Israel and US wars over the last half century? For a detailed and carefully documented account of (a) the economic cost to the US and (b) the human cost of illegal war and occupation in the Israel-Occupied Palestinian Territories and the US-Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories see "The Economic and Human Cost of Israel & US Empire" in Media Monitors Network (see: http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/16112).

The next is something all free men can agree with but then...

Quote by: Below are some key statistics of importance for decent folk who believe in the Jeffersonian principles of the American Declaration of Independence, namely the equality of all men and their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Estimates of the cost of US support for Israel range from $200 billion (simple monetary value plus interest, 1949-2005) to $2,600 billion (total actual economic cost to the US, 1956-2002).

It details statistics on the under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Palestine Territories and reaches the conclusion...

Quote by: Israel's complicity in this carnage is clear but the actual extent of its responsibility is debatable. In the post-war era the US has economically and militarily dominated the people and resource utilization of the World and is accordingly complicit in the associated horrendous global avoidable mortality.... Direct US responsibility for mass avoidable mortality is clearer in countries devastated by US militarism.... The simple monetary cost (without including interest and other economic cost components) has been $350 billion (for the Korean War), $800 billion (Vietnam War), $80 billion (Gulf War, 1991), $38 billion (War in Afghanistan, 2001-2005) and $179 billion (Iraq War, 2003-2005). The ultimate cost to the US of the Iraq War may eventually exceed $1,600 billion.

It has plenty of detail on avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality; "Death ratios" of "enemy civilian and military deaths" to "US military deaths from WW2 on. Then ...

Quote by: Of course respect for Mother and Child is a fundamental tenet of decent human societies and accordingly the horrendous toll of infant lives in Asian countries devastated by the US War Machine is an obscene blot on humanity....Non-provision by the US Coalition of life-sustaining requisites in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories is killing 400,000 infants annually, corresponding to over 1,000 avoidable infant deaths DAILY.

It finishes with ...

Peace is the only way - but we are obliged to inform everyone about gross abuse of humanity.

He gives all his personal data and it looks impressive.

Does the cost of the war interest many Americans or is it just a vast deep hole where Halliburton and friends make fortunes beyond belief, despite the cost in Us and Iraqi lives. Is the US interested in getting back any moral leadership in world affairs. Would you trust an American administration.




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