What have we gotten for the trillions we spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Economic Collapse October 28, 2011 Over a trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Whether you are for the wars or against the wars, it is important for all of us to step back and evaluate what we have really gotten for all of that money. In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda forces that were shooting at U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan take over the country. Now they have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law on all of Libya. After 10 years of having our boys shot up in Afghanistan, the Afghan government is so “grateful” that they are publicly saying that they will side with Pakistan in any future war against the United States. In Iraq, Islamic radicals are beheading and murdering dozens and dozens of Christians and the new Iraqi government seemingly can’t wait to push the remaining U.S. soldiers out of the country. We ran up well over a trillion dollars of new debt to “liberate” these countries, but are they really in better shape than they were before these wars? Are we really in better shape than we were before these wars? Today, the United States military has at least one base in more than half of all the nations on the planet. The U.S. spends more than 7 times as much on the military as any other country on earth does. Without a doubt, the United States will always need a strong military. But withthe national debt soaring to unprecedented heights, is it really wise for us to try to be the police of the entire globe? We have poured well over a trillion dollars into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and we have very little to show for it. Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya safer places than before we went to war with them? No. Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya producing fewer “terrorists” than before we went to war with them? No.
Are we safer than before we started all these wars? No. Our government has spent well over a trillion dollars and the blood of thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers has been spilled and in the final analysis very little has actually been accomplished. Let’s take a closer look at these conflicts and see exactly what we have gotten for all of the money that we have spent…. Libya In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda take power. In Afghanistan and Iraq we were supposedly fighting to do just the opposite. So just what in the world is going on here? The price tag for the first week of airstrikes on Libya alone was 600 million dollars. Yes, Gaddafi was a tyrant, but have we invested a lot of time and effort only to watch as an even worse government takes power? According to The Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels was openly admitting that his “troops” included jihadists that were firing bullets at U.S. forces in Iraq…. Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. A recent article by Kurt Nimmo for Infowars.com discussed some of the other ways that al-Qaeda has been active in Libya during the fight against Gaddafi…. Despite Aujali’s assurance, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the former head of LIFG, was appointed to run a military council in September. He fought with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In February, it was reported that al-Qaeda had set-up an Islamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Abdelkarim al-Hasadi. Now that they have won, the “rebels” have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law all over Libya. According to a new article posted on The Telegraph,
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of NATO’s National Transitional Council, has even announced plans to repeal polygamy laws because they are not compliant with Sharia law…. Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy. Should we be cheering this? Why would the U.S. government want to spend a single penny helping al-Qaeda take over Libya and set up Sharia law there? There should not be a single American (conservative or liberal) that supports what has gone down in Libya. Afghanistan The U.S. military has now been in Afghanistan for 10 years. World War II lasted less than 6 years. The U.S. government has spent over 467 billion dollars on the war in Afghanistan, and thousands upon thousands of our troops have been killed or wounded there. Even after all this time, a single day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon. So are the Afghans grateful that we have sacrificed so much to bring “democracy” to that nation? Of course not. Just check out what Afghan President Hamid Karzai said during one recent interview…. “God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan” Did you catch that? Karzai says that in a future war between Pakistan and the United States, Afghanistan is going to be fighting against us. But didn’t we bring them freedom? No, we did not. Instead, one radical Islamic government replaced another.
Today, there are officially zero Christian churches left in Afghanistan. The new constitution of Afghanistan says that that Islam is the “religion of the state“. The new constitution of Afghanistan also states that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam”. Earlier this year, I wrote about one Afghan man that was actually sentenced to death for converting to Christianity…. In Afghanistan right now, a one-legged Afghan Red Cross worker named Said Musa is sitting in a prison cell awaiting his execution. Musa, a father of six children, was arrested by the Afghan government as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy last year. He was sentenced to death by an Afghan court that was established by the new Afghan government that the United States worked so hard to set up. He has been tortured and sexually abused for months. An Afghan judge has told him that he will be hung within a matter of days. So what was his crime? He was a Muslim that has become a Christian. Under Sharia law, that is punishable by death. Is this is the “freedom” that we have sacrificed so many American lives to bring to Afghanistan? Thankfully he was later released from prison and was able to get out of the country. However, this just shows that the people of Afghanistan are currently experiencing a level of freedom that is quite comparable to what they experienced under the Taliban. After all that the United States has done over there, very little positive change has taken place. 1. Iraq Up to now, it is estimated that the U.S. government has spent over 800 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers lost arms and legs in Iraq. Thousands of U.S. soldiers will never be coming home at all. But after all of our efforts, Iraq is still a far less safe place than it was before we invaded. Christians and other religious minorities once were able to worship in peace, but now they are racing to get out of Iraq as fast as they can. Why?
Well, because Christians and other religious minorities are being brutally targeted by Islamic radicals. For example, about a year ago more than 80 Iraqi Christians were beheaded on a single day. All that the Christians were trying to do was attend a church service. One four-month-old baby was actually beheaded right in front of her parents. You can see pictures of the shocking violence from that day right here. Iraq is a complete and total disaster zone at this point. The Iraqi government says that it is willing for U.S. military trainers to stay in the country, but they also say that there will be no more immunity for U.S. soldiers. We have left the country in far worse shape than we found it, and Iraq is now a bigger breeding ground for terrorists than it ever was before. You see, the truth is that the populations of these countries will continue to hold a grudge once we leave. They are simply not going to forgive and forget. There are millions of Islamic radicals in these countries that will never, ever, ever forgive the United States. The hatred that they feel for us could be passed down for generations. We have not brought freedom to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Instead, we have just replaced the tyranny that they were suffering under with new forms of tyranny. Meanwhile, we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion. Yes, the U.S. will always need a strong military. Yes, there are areas where we actually need to spend more on the military. For example, now that Barack Obama has completely gutted our strategic nuclear arsenal, that is one area that we desperately need to attend to. However, we simply cannot continue to recklessly spend money like we are today. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, and trying to be “the police of the world” is very expensive…. *Before the start of the “War on Terror”, the U.S. national debt was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it is getting very close to 15 trillion dollars. *Right now, the U.S. military is in nearly 130 different
nations and it has a total of approximately 700 military bases around the world. It takes about 100 billion dollars a year to maintain these bases. *U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined. *The United States accounts for 46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is in second place with only 6.6%. Meanwhile, our national security just continues to deteriorate. Millions of people have illegally poured across our border with Mexico and the federal government is actually suing border states such as Arizona to keep them from trying to stop this. Our national security priorities are way, way out of whack. We continue to waste money in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable and yet we continue to become less secure with each passing year. Yes, the United States needs a very, very strong military. Yes, national security needs to be a very, very high priority. But what we have been doing over the past decade has not worked. In fact, the Bush/Obama foreign policy has been an abject failure. We have poured hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain and we are less secure today than at any point since World War II. It is time to admit that Barack Obama and George W. Bush have been fundamentally wrong about these wars. Because of their foolishness, we are less safe today and our allies are less safe today. Afghanistan is not our friend now. Neither is Iraq. Libya looks like it is going to become an alQaeda paradise thanks to us. There is very little “freedom” in those 3 nations today. Instead, “Islamic law” is being shoved down the throats of the people living in those countries. So, in the final analysis, what have we really accomplished?\ Obama Calls Murder of Children in Libya A “Success” The hypocrisy of Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama bombing Libya, a war crime resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and the maiming of countless others. video below http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7tSYG3zsvQ
Iraq war will cost more than World War II By David R. Francis, Contributor / October 25, 2011 Iraq war, now winding down with US troop exit by December, has cost more than $800 billion so far. But ongoing medical treatment, replacement vehicles, etc., will push costs to $4 trillion or more. Anyone curious about the cost of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can look it up on costofwar.com, up to the latest fraction of a second. Last weekend, the Iraq war had cost more than $800 billion since 2001; the Afghan war, $467 billion plus. For the 8-1/2-year conflict in Iraq alone, that works out to nearly $3,000 a second. So President Obama’s announcement that all US troops will be out of Iraq by year end should mean some drop in ongoing military spending. But the budget relief probably won’t be as much as you might expect. Tragically, beside the financial cost, there is the human toll. The war in Iraq has resulted in some 4,480 US troops killed and more than 32,000 wounded. (The Iraqis have suffered far more fatalities, about 654,965, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.) Thus, ongoing medical and disability claims and treatment of US veterans will boost the costs of the Iraq war even more. Throw in the replacement of vehicles, weapons, equipment, etc., and the eventual tab for the United States could reach $4 trillion to $6 trillion, according to University of Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes. Those are big numbers. They would be on par with the $4.6 trillion the US spent on the recent financial bailouts, according to Barry Ritholtz, CEO of Wall Street research firm Fusion IQ and author of the popular blog The Big Picture. (Another estimate puts the bailout cost at $8.7 trillion.) The sum spent on the Iraq war could pay for a good chunk of Obamacare, professor Bilnes estimates. It’s more than the $3.6 trillion the US spent to fight World War II, even after adjusting for inflation, Mr. Ritholtz estimates. Modern warfare is just plain expensive. The military has found ways to reduce the human toll of war (compared with Iraq, fatalities in World War II were far higher: 17 million combatants from some 70 nations, 19 million
Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, 6 million European Jews, and so on). But political leaders always seem to underestimate the financial costs. When President George W. Bush launched the war, charging incorrectly that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Pentagon estimated its cost at $50 billion to $60 billion. Economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey got in hot water at the White House when he guessed in public the war could cost as much as $200 billion. One oddity of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is that even as military preparations were under way, Congress cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003. These Bush tax cuts meant in effect that the wars were financed by adding to federal debt, rather than paid for from revenues. US outstanding debt zoomed from $5.7 trillion when Mr. Bush took office to $10.6 trillion when he left. And all but $700 billion of that debt was accumulated before the Wall Street bailouts began under the Troubled Asset Relief Program in October 2008. Another interesting note: It is estimated Al Qaeda spent roughly half a million dollars to destroy the World Trade Center and damage the Pentagon. Mr. Obama aims to end the US combat mission in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, more than three years away and after many more billions of dollars will have been spent. After the end of the Cold War, real US defense spending dropped by 40 percent during the 1990s. The savings were in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s to be hoped that similar savings could be made with the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama and Congress could then presumably afford to spend more federal money at home rather than abroad -– and create more jobs for Americans. David R. Francis is a former business editor of The Christian Science Monitor.
Police State 4: The Rise of FEMA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klqv9t1zVww Shadow Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65s00aeghO8 Dark Secrets : Inside Bohemian Grove http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVtEvplXMLs Banking with hitler http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YauM5dHLn1s Architects of Control Michael Tsarion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QANU7EhwArM