No sign of the terrorists yet

AP | Sep 10, 2011

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies have found no evidence that al Qaeda has sneaked any terrorists into the country for a strike coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, senior officials said Saturday.

But authorities kept a high alert as investigators looked for proof of a plot possibly timed to disrupt events planned Sunday in Washington or New York.

Since late Wednesday, counterterrorism officials have chased a tip that al Qaeda may have sent three men to the U.S. on a mission to detonate a car bomb in either city. At least two of those men could be U.S. citizens, according to the tip.

No intelligence supported that tip as of Saturday, and officials continued to question the validity of the initial information.

While such tips are common among intelligence agencies, this one received more attention, and government officials chose to speak publicly about it, because of the connection to the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

At the FBI field office in Washington, assistant director James McJunkin described the tip and the response as routine. The U.S. already had bolstered security nationwide before the upcoming anniversary and anticipated an increase in tips.

“We expect we’re going to get an increase in threats and investigative activity around high-profile dates and events,” he said. “This is a routine response for us.”

Intelligence analysts have looked at travel patterns and behaviors of people who recently entered the country. While they have singled out a few people for additional scrutiny, none has shown any involvement in a plot, according to the senior U.S. officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the investigation.

President Barack Obama met with his national security team Saturday, but the White House released no new information about possible threats. A statement said that counterterrorism efforts were working well and would not ease in the weeks and months ahead.

The tip that touched off the most recent investigation came from a CIA informant who has proved reliable in the past, according to U.S. officials. They said the informant approached intelligence officials overseas to say that the men were ordered by new al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 by doing harm on U.S. soil.

Al-Zawahri took over as the group’s leader after the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden during a raid in May at his compound in Pakistan.

The informant said the would-be attackers were of Arab descent and might speak Arabic as well as English. Counterterrorism officials were looking for certain names associated with the threat, but it was unclear whether the names were real or fake.

Some intelligence officials have raised doubts about the threat, given the short turnaround time. Someone who recently arrived in the United States would have just days to plan and obtain materials for a car bomb attack, a difficult feat even with a long lead time.

But they did not dismiss the threat. Extra security was put in place to protect the people in the two cities that took the brunt of the jetliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Terror attacks, attempts since 9/11

Law enforcement agencies around the country had increased security at airports, nuclear plants, train stations and elsewhere in the weeks leading to Sept. 11. The latest threat made those measures more urgent.

Both cities were clearly on edge. Police in New York were investigating two vans stolen from a World Trade Center site contractor and another from a New Jersey storage facility, while their counterparts in Washington were on the lookout for a pair of U-Haul rental vans reported missing from nearby Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Police connected none of the threats to a terror plot, but said they were taking extra precautions because of the recent threat.

U.S. embassies and consulates also stepped up safeguards in preparation for the anniversary.

While authorities urged people to keep a watchful eye for suspicious activity as usual, they said there was no reason the latest tip should change anyone’s weekend.

“Whatever you have plans for, it’s a beautiful day. It’s going to be a beautiful weekend,” McJunkin said. “It’s college football Saturday. Tomorrow is the start of the NFL (National Football League) season. So we expect the public is going to be out enjoying what it means to be an American.”

Official: Al Qaeda Terror Threat Looking More Like a ‘Goose Chase’

An Amtrack police officer stands guard at a track entrance at Pennsylvania Station on Friday, Sept. 9, 2011 in New York.

FoxNews.com | Sep 10, 2011

A possible Al Qaeda plot to launch an attack during the 10th anniversary weekend of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is “looking more and more like a goose chase,” a senior U.S. official told Fox News on Saturday.

Federal authorities have been questioning all day the credibility of a tip from a previously reliable source that that Al Qaeda had planned to attack Washington or New York, putting though both cities on high alert.

But authorities have not been able to corroborate any of the information from the source.

“The threat is looking less and less credible,” the official said, adding that the entire plot as outlined by the source “doesn’t seem feasible.”

“The time frame doesn’t make sense for when these operatives would have been moving into position,” the official said. “We are going back to the original source. The president will be briefed on it again in the morning, but people are questioning the credibility of this information at this time. Something is not adding up.”

But officials say they won’t rest until they review every last detail.

Word that Al Qaeda had ordered the mission reached U.S. officials midweek. A CIA informant who has proved reliable in the past approached intelligence officials overseas to say that three men of Arab descent — at least two of whom could be U.S. citizens — had been ordered by newly minted Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahri to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Sunday by doing harm on U.S. soil.

According to the intelligence, they were to detonate a car bomb in one of the cities. Should that mission prove impossible, the attackers have been told to simply cause as much destruction as they can.

It’s still unclear whether any such individuals even exist, according to U.S. officials.

“We don’t have a smoking gun yet,” Brenda Heck, a top counterterrorism official in the FBI’s Washington field office, told Fox News.”It is going to take a little bit to completely flush this out. We certainly — hour by hour — we are learning more.”

Earlier Saturday, the head of the FBI’s Washington field office, James McJunkin, said he doesn’t expect that there will be any problem “over the anniversary weekend.”

If the the tip had not come on the eve of the 9/11  anniversary, the intelligence community likely would not have acted and alerted the public to this degree, the senior official said.

“We couldn’t ignore it,” the official said. “But something doesn’t add up: the routing, the timing of the assets moving into position.”

Heck said it’s “absolutely possible” authorities will never know whether the alleged plot was in fact real.

In the meantime, extra security was put in place to protect the people in the two cities that took the brunt of the jetliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a decade ago. It was the worst terror assault in the nation’s history, and Al Qaeda has long dreamed of striking again to mark the anniversary. But it could be weeks before the intelligence community can say whether this particular threat is real.

The New York Police Department was paying special attention to the thefts of three vans Sunday, scrutinizing them them to eliminate the possibility of their being tied to a larger threat. One van was stolen from a Jersey City facility, while the other two were stolen last week from a company that does work at the World Trade Center site.

Briefed on the threat Friday morning, President Obama instructed his security team to take “all necessary precautions,” the White House said. Obama still planned to travel to New York on Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary with stops that day at the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.

Heck, the FBI counterterrorism official, said the government’s response to the latest threat “has been a little different” than at other times.

“We have been very open with the public on this,” she said. “I think there will be some debate about that after we get through this weekend. [But] I think there’s a very positive side to letting the public know a little bit more about what we are doing behind the scenes.”

In particular, she said, by letting the public know about a threat quickly, “They can help us with what’s going on out in the public areas so that we can respond if something is suspicious.”

In fact, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier said suspicious reporting has surged by as much as 30 percent, a change that she called “very reassuring.”

How Blair did business with Gaddafi

Shoulder to shoulder: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair embraces Colonel Gaddafi during a 2007 meeting

sundaytimes.lk | Sep 10, 2011

By Stephen Glover

Even before the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s hateful regime, it was clear the last Labour Government had co-operated with the monster in all kinds of discreditable ways. It had sold him lots of weapons. It had welcomed, and almost certainly connived in, the Scottish Government’s early release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which caused the deaths of 270 people, 43 of them British.

But only now is the true nature of Britain’s shamingly close relationship with Gaddafi becoming clear, as a result of documents uncovered in Tripoli. Their authenticity has not been officially confirmed, and until that happens they should be treated with some caution. If, as seems extremely likely, they turn out to be genuine, we will have proof of a scandal of barely credible proportions. Some documents reveal that members of British intelligence helped obtain telephone numbers and details of Libyan dissidents in Britain, which they passed on to their counterparts in Tripoli.

Even more serious is the suggestion that the Labour Government countenanced ‘rendition’ – the abduction and transfer of prisoners from one country to another. A succession of ministers, not least the former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, repeatedly assured the House of Commons that we took no part in rendition.

And yet a CIA document found in Tripoli appears to show that Britain worked with Libya to secure the removal of a terrorist suspect from Hong Kong to Tripoli in March 2004. Abdel Hakim Belhadj, ironically now a senior military commander in the Libyan rebel army, says he was kept in isolation and regularly tortured by Gaddafi’s men.

Belhadj may not be a very nice person. Indeed, the prominence of this Islamist in the rebel army makes me wonder again about our new Libyan ‘friends’. But the suggestion that MI6 in effect arranged his torture is highly disturbing. A letter dated March 18, 2004, apparently from Mark Allen (now Sir Mark), at that time head of counter-terrorism in MI6, illuminates the extent of British involvement.

Sir Mark thanked Musa Kusa — Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, who is accused of many atrocities — for ‘the help you are giving us’ in relation to Belhadj. He adds that No 10 is ‘grateful’ for Musa Kusa’s role in arranging a forthcoming visit by Tony Blair to meet Gaddafi in Libya.

‘No 10 are keen that the Prime Minister meet the leader in his tent,’ Sir Mark writes. ‘I don’t know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is that the journalists would love it.’ Really? I can’t remember jumping up and down. The intimate tone of Sir Mark’s letter to a man he knew was a torturer – and who served the interests of the monster Gaddafi – is sickening. So too is his sycophantic missive of a few months earlier in which he thanks Musa Kusa for a present of ‘a very large volume of dates and oranges’. Let’s hope Lady Allen enjoyed them.

Sir Mark Allen could not have built up a close relationship with a very senior member of Gaddafi’s regime without the encouragement of Mr Blair and the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. It was part of an initiative endorsed by Mr Blair, the purpose of which was to wipe the slate clean with Gaddafi and to do business with him, irrespective of his past and continuing crimes.

Here was a very bad man who had funded the IRA and ordered the Lockerbie bombing. One of Gaddafi’s diplomats had shot dead policewoman Yvonne Fletcher in London in 1984. MI6 and No 10 were also aware of the atrocities he had visited on his own people — for example, the massacre of more than 1,200 prisoners at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in a single month in 1996.

And yet, when Mr Blair met Gaddafi in his tent at the end of March 2004, the two men embraced like friends. I can see there was a good argument for Britain getting on civil terms with Libya, though suggestions that Gaddafi might have had nuclear weapons which he then decommissioned are fanciful. He was eager to make friends with the West, having seen Saddam Hussein pulverised, and of course he wanted the new business, too. Anglo-Dutch Shell and BP were awarded huge new contracts, and dozens of British companies moved into Libya. Oh yes, and in 2004 Sir Mark Allen landed a cushy, well-paid job as a special adviser to BP. His Libyan contacts may have come in useful. But the political gain was mostly Gaddafi’s. Mr Blair’s diplomacy, for which he took much credit, gave respectability to an unreformed and repressive regime.

Nothing came of a visit to Libya by British police investigating the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, though the Foreign Office believed it knew the names of those responsible. Meanwhile, the Libyans exerted growing pressure to secure the release of al-Megrahi, which finally took place in August 2009 on the spurious grounds that he had only three months to live. He is still alive.

Documents found in the abandoned residence of the British ambassador in Tripoli confirm how desperate the Labour Government was for him to be set free, with one diplomat warning that our new Libyan friends ‘might seek to exact vengeance’ if he wasn’t. Earlier this year, Sir Gus O’Donnell, head of the civil service, said Labour ministers did ‘all they could’ to secure al-Megrahi’s release.

The Labour Government also sold weapons to Gaddafi worth tens of millions of pounds, which were obviously intended for use against his own people: water cannon, armoured personnel carriers, tear gas and sniper rifles. Documents discovered in Tripoli suggest the SAS helped train Gaddafi’s Khamis Brigade, which has carried out some of the worst atrocities of recent weeks.

My God, the shame of it. Rendition. Complicity in torture. Cosying up to monsters. Ignoring the case of Yvonne Fletcher. Facilitating the release of a man convicted of the murder of 270 people. Supplying arms and training Libyan forces.

The man who supervised most of this was that great moralist and Christian, Tony Blair, whose almost final act as Prime Minister in 2007 was to sign a ‘prisoner exchange’ agreement with his friend Col Gaddafi, which was plainly intended by the Libyan leader to pave the way for al-Megrahi’s release, as indeed it did.

Our former prime minister, whose war against Saddam was partly rooted in his own trumpeted moral rectitude, was evidently drawn to Gaddafi, who was not obviously a better man than the Iraqi tyrant. How slight is Mr Blair’s understanding of how a British statesman should behave is illustrated by yesterday’s amazing revelation that he stood as godfather to a daughter of the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

New allegations of rendition and complicity and torture will be investigated by Sir Peter Gibson’s existing inquiry into the treatment of British detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Do we seriously think this inquiry will be able to address the mounting allegations that the last government, and Mr Blair in particular, succoured and promoted one of the nastiest regimes in the world?

If we can have numerous inquiries into the state of the British Press, we can surely manage a single one that examines Tony Blair’s friendly dealings with a man who is now an indicted war criminal, as well investigating torture, rendition, al-Megrahi’s release, training of Gaddafi’s special forces, links with Libyan intelligence, and sales of weapons intended for repression. If only David Cameron had the guts for it!

British Secret Service Helped Al Qathafi Jail, Torture Libyan Citizen

Sami al-Saadi, a Libyan citizen who The Guardian reports, fell foul of British MI6 and Al Qathafi intelligence

Associates of Saadi cannot understand why his capture and interrogation would hold any great intelligence value for the British authorities, and are speculating that he may have been a “gift” from the British to the Gaddafi regime.

tripolipost.com | Sep 10, 2011

Libyan Islamist Sami al-Saadi has revealed how he, his wife and children were imprisoned after being “rendered” in an operation MI6 hatched in co-operationwith Al Qathafi’s intelligence services shortly before former British PM Tony Blair visited Libya. He says he is now considering whether to sue the British government.

Sami al-Saadi’s experience is reported exclusively by British national daily newspaper The Guardian, that says that he, his wife and four children, the youngest a girl aged six, were flown from Hong Kong to Tripoli, where they were taken straight to prison. Saadi was interrogated under torture while his family were held in a nearby cell.

“They handcuffed me and my wife on the plane, my kids and wife were crying all the way,” he told The Guardian. “It was a very bad situation. My wife and children were held for two months, and psychologically punished. The Libyans told me that the British were very happy.”

Saadi says he is now considering whether to sue the British government, making him the second Libyan rendition victim to threaten legal proceedings in less than a week.

The evidence that the family were victims of a British-led rendition operation is contained in a secret CIA document found in the abandoned office of Mussa Kussa, Al Qathafi’s former intelligence chief, in Tripoli last week.

In London, meanwhile, an official inquiry into Britain’s role in torture and rendition since 9/11 says the government has provided information about the UK’s role in the affair, and Whitehall sources defended intelligence agencies’ actions by saying they were following “ministerially authorised government policy”.

It is the first time evidence has emerged that the British intelligence agencies ran their own rendition operation, as opposed to co-operating with those that were mounted by the CIA, The Guardian says.

Saadi was held for more than six years, during which time he says he was regularly beaten and subjected to electric shocks. Shortly after his arrival in Tripoli, he says, Mussa Kussa visited in person to explain how Al Qathafi’s new friends in the west were helping him track down the regime’s opponents around the world.

“He told me: ‘You’ve been running from us, but since 9/11 I can pick up the phone and call MI6 or the CIA and they give us all the information we want on you. You’ve nowhere to hide.'”

The newspaper reports that Saadi was a leading member of a Libyan mujahideen group known by the nom de guerre Abu Munthir. He was interrogated on one occasion by British intelligence officers, who he alleges did nothing to try to protect him after he told them he was being tortured.

The Foreign Office has declined to say whether it knew what became of Abu Munthir’s family as a result of the rendition operation, describing this information as an “intelligence matter”. A spokesman told The Guardion: “Our position is that it is the government’s longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters.”

Saadi says he was tricked by the British authorities into travelling to Hong Kong. While in exile in China in March 2004 he approached British intelligence officers via an intermediary in the UK, and was told that he would be permitted to return to London, where he had lived for three years after seeking asylum in 1993.

First, however, he would have to be interviewed at the British consulate in Hong Kong, and would be met by British diplomats on his arrival.

Saadi flew to Hong Kong with his wife, two sons aged 12 and nine, and two daughters aged 14 and six. They were not met by any British officials but were detained by Chinese border guards over alleged passport irregularities, held for a week and then despatched to Tripoli.

Saadi says he always assumed the British were behind his rendition, “working behind the curtain”. Confirmation came when Human Rights Watch, the New York-based NGO, discovered a cache of papers in Mussa Kussa’s abandoned office.

Among the documents was a fax that the CIA sent to Tripoli on March 23, 2004. Marked SECRET/US ONLY/EXCEPT LIBYA, it concerns the forthcoming rendition of Saadi and his family. The wording suggests the CIA took no part in the planning of the operation, but was eager to become involved.

It says: “Our service has become aware that last weekend LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) deputy Emir Abu Munthir and his spouse and children were being held in Hong Kong detention for immigration/passport violations.

“We are also aware that your service had been co-operating with the British to effect Abu Munthir’s removal to Tripoli, and that you had an aircraft available for this purpose in the Maldives.”

It goes on to explain that although Hong Kong had no wish to see a Libyan aircraft land on its territory, “to enable you to assume control of Abu Munthir and his family”, the operation would work if the Libyans were to charter an aircraft registered in a third country, and that the US would assist with the cost.

The operation coincided exactly with Tony Blair’s first visit to Libya. Two days after the fax was sent, Blair arrived to shake hands with A Qathafi, and said the two nations wanted to make “common cause” in counter-terrorism operations.

It was also announced that Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell had signed a £550m gas exploration deal. Three days later Saadi and his family were put aboard a private Egyptian-registered jet and flown to Tripoli.

Associates of Saadi cannot understand why his capture and interrogation would hold any great intelligence value for the British authorities, and are speculating that he may have been a “gift” from the British to the Gaddafi regime, The Guardian said.

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More women turning to ‘sex surrogacy’

timesofindia.indiatimes.com | Sep 7, 2011

‘Sex surrogacy’, a controversial practice not commonly prescribed by therapists, is reportedly on the rise among women whose physical or mental health problems prevent them from enjoying a healthy sex life, say experts.

A surrogate sex partner works with the patients to build their communication skills and self-confidence, and help them become more comfortable with physical and emotional intimacy, which may include eye contact, hand-holding or even sexual intercourse.

“More and more women are now claiming their birth right to either have an orgasm, or healthy relationship or have sexual satisfaction,” CBS News quoted Shai Rotem, a surrogate partner who is based in Los Angeles but practices internationally, as saying.

In his 14 years as a surrogate partner, Rotem has worked with women who have a condition called vaginismus, which makes sex painful, women in their 40s or 50s who are virgins and women who have experienced sexual trauma.

While no laws technically prohibit sex surrogacy, many therapists do not endorse the practice and even consider it to be dangerous.

However, many experts say surrogate partner therapy has its place in sex therapy, and can be useful to the right patients.

Vena Blanchard, president of the International Professional Surrogates Association (IPSA), claims that requests for sex surrogates for female patients have steadily increased in recent times.

“There’s been a steady increase in women taking ownership of their sexuality,” Blanchard told MyHealthNewsDaily .

“They don’t just want sex therapy to please their partner. They want to make their own lives better for themselves,” she said.

Surrogate sex partner therapy was first reported in the 1970s and mostly used by men, but has not been commonly used since.

How Safe Are You? What Almost $8 Trillion in National Security Spending Bought You

nationalpriorities.org | Aug 16, 2011

by Chris Hellman

The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a “doomsday mechanism” for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget.

None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you’re hooked on massive military spending, it’s hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions. So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans.

Consider this my contribution to a future 12-step program for national security sobriety.

Let’s start with the three basic post-9/11 numbers that Washington’s addicts need to know:

1. $5.9 trillion: That’s the sum of taxpayer dollars that’s gone into the Pentagon’s annual “base budget,” from 2000 to today. Note that the base budget includes nuclear weapons activities, even though they are overseen by the Department of Energy, but — and this is crucial — not the cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, even without those war costs, the Pentagon budget managed to grow from $302.9 billion in 2000, to $545.1 billion in 2011. That’s a dollar increase of $242.2 billion or an 80% jump ($163.6 billion and 44% if you adjust for inflation). It’s enough to make your head swim, and we’re barely started.

2. $1.36 trillion: That’s the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars by this September 30th, the end of the current fiscal year, including all moneys spent for those wars by the Pentagon, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other federal agencies. Of this, $869 billion will have been for Iraq, $487.6 billion for Afghanistan.

Add up our first two key national security spending numbers and you’re already at $7.2 trillion since the September 11th attacks. And even that staggering figure doesn’t catch the full extent of Washington spending in these years. So onward to our third number.

3. $636 billion: Most people usually ignore this part of the national security budget and we seldom see any figures for it, but it’s the amount, adjusted for inflation, that the U.S. government has spent so far on “homeland security.” This isn’t an easy figure to arrive at because homeland-security funding flows through literally dozens of federal agencies and not just the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A mere $16 billion was requested for homeland security in 2001. For 2012, the figure is $71.6 billion, only $37 billion of which will go through DHS. A substantial part, $18.1 billion, will be funneled through — don’t be surprised — the Department of Defense, while other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services ($4.6 billion) and the Department of Justice ($4.1 billion) pick up the slack.

Add those three figures together and you’re at the edge of $8 trillion in national security spending for the last decade-plus and perhaps wondering where the nearest group for compulsive-spending addiction meets.

Now, for a few of those questions I mentioned, just to bring reality further into focus:

Q. How does that nearly $8 trillion compare with past spending?

In the decade before the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon base budget added up to an impressive $4.2 trillion, only one-third less than for the past decade. But add in the cost of the Afghan and Iraq wars and total Pentagon spending post-9/11 is actually two-thirds greater than in the previous decade. That’s quite a jump. As for homeland-security funding, spending figures for the years prior to 2000 are hard to identify because the category didn’t exist (nor did anyone who mattered in Washington even think to use that word “homeland”). But there can be no question that whatever it was, it would pale next to present spending.

Q. Is that nearly $8 trillion the real total for these years, or could it be even higher?

The war-cost calculations I’ve used above, which come from my own organization, the National Priorities Project, only take into account funds that have been requested by the President and appropriated by Congress. This, however, is just one way of considering the problem of war and national security spending. A recent study published by the Watson Institute of Brown University took a much broader approach. In the summary of their work, the Watson Institute analysts wrote, “There are at least three ways to think about the economic costs of these wars: what has been spent already, what could or must be spent in the future, and the comparative economic effects of spending money on war instead of something else.”

By including funding for such things as veterans benefits, future costs for treating the war-wounded, and interest payments on war-related borrowing, they came up with $3.2 trillion to $4 trillion in war costs, which would put those overall national security figures since 2001 at around $11 trillion.

I took a similar approach in an earlier TomDispatch piece in which I calculated the true costs of national security at $1.2 trillion annually.

All of this brings another simple, but seldom-asked question to mind:

Q. Are we safer?

Regardless of what figures you choose to use, one thing is certain: we’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. And given the debate raging in Washington this summer about how to rein in trillion-dollar deficits and a spiraling debt, it’s surprising that no one thinks to ask just how much safety bang for its buck the U.S. is getting from those trillions.

Of course, it’s not an easy question to answer, but there are some troubling facts out there that should give one pause. Let’s start with government accounting, which, like military music, is something of an oxymoron. Despite decades of complaints from Capitol Hill and various congressional attempts to force changes via legislation, the Department of Defense still cannot pass an audit. Believe it or not, it never has.

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The Priceless Price of the Post-9/11 Decade

huffingtonpost.com | Sep 9, 2011

As we approach the ten-year anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, we are seeing lots of estimates on the costs of America’s wars waged in the last decade. Yet most of them miss the big picture.

President Obama has pegged the cost of the Iraq war at about a trillion dollars. This doesn’t capture the full price. University of Columbia’s Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard’s Linda J. Bilmes argue that the total economic cost is closer to three trillion, adding that just “the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.”

Many factors are ignored in the smaller estimates. For example, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will easily cost a trillion federal dollars in veterans’ benefits and health care alone.

Winslow Wheeler, Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Straus Military Reform Project, stresses the need to look at everything: the post-9/11 military operations, the aid to governments like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, the increased financial burden of domestic security, and the interest on deficit defense spending that financed these wars. He finds that “the federal costs already incurred would be from $3.2 to $3.9 trillion” — even if the wars ended abruptly tomorrow. The scholars at the Eisenhower Study Group arrive at similar estimates.

We can also simply look at the effect on the defense budget over the last decade. Exorbitant Pentagon spending has always been touted as necessary to protect the country, yet ten years ago it was suddenly decided that this huge price tag was not nearly enough. Apparently all that defense and intelligence spending before 9/11, which failed to prevent the attack, was for something other than defense.  In 2001, adjusted for inflation to today’s dollars, the defense budget was just over $400 billion. After 9/11 the budget began rising at about eight percent a year. The latest funding request was for $707 billion. This doesn’t include the ballooning security-related expenses in the Department of Homeland Security, State Department, or Department of Energy’s nuclear weapon operations.

What was the full opportunity cost of all these wars? Few economists ask this question. What if these resources had been available for private savings and investment? What if the Americans and foreigners fighting had instead been working in the commercial sector, producing wealth? Perhaps the financial situation would look considerably better. The government is notorious for diverting money and energy from productive uses toward wasteful ones. Nothing is as destructive as war. Even the most just war imaginable is a disaster for the economy, as the great economist Ludwig von Mises explained.

Then there is a toll that dollars can’t measure: the cost in blood. So far, over 1,750 Americans have died in Afghanistan and more than 4,470 in Iraq. Taken together, this is twice as many Americans as died on 9/11. The trajectory is not so encouraging either, when we consider than 559 American troops died in 2010, and 469 died in 2008, Bush’s last year in office. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans have been wounded and have suffered major psychological harm, all for wars whose mission is harder to justify every day. Are hawks still going to defend a war in Iraq, for example, given that Osama bin Laden was killed many years later in Pakistan?

This cost in foreign lives is even higher. Estimates vary widely but the real number is likely much higher than the mere “thousands” that Obama has pegged as the death count in Iraq. In 2006, the Lancet estimated the number of Iraqis to die as a result of the war to be 654,965. The real number is almost certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Many thousands have also died in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, it was reported last month that 168 children have died in drone attacks alone. Then there are the millions of innocents displaced from their homes.

In terms of precious liberties, the cost is simply immeasurable. The Patriot Act has trashed the Fourth Amendment. The Military Commissions Act gutted habeas corpus. Presidents of both parties have claimed the authority to detain someone indefinitely, even an American citizen, without due process, or even to declare someone an enemy combatant and be summarily killed.

The greatest loss to America may be in national character. Polls show that half of the public believes torture is sometimes justified. The people let their government get away with warrantless wiretapping and undeclared wars without any congressional approval or a credible threat to counter. Americans tolerate the greatest indignities at the airport and permanent war with half a dozen countries, as if this were a normal state of affairs.

When we hear talk about the trillion dollars spent “securing America” since 9/11, we should keep in mind that the cost has been much higher. Indeed, what has been lost is priceless.

10 Years On, the War on Terror Saps U.S. Economy

sunshinestatenews.com | Sept 10, 2011

By Kenric Ward

If World War II brought America out of the Depression, the post-9/11 “War on Terror” threatens to drag the country into one. So goes the conventional wisdom a decade after the life-changing attacks on the United States.

The nation has paid a dear price in blood and treasure to hunt down the terrorist organizations that hijacked four commercial jetliners and toppled the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

In addition to the 2,752 lives lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, more than 6,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to estimates, wartime operations directly resulted in the deaths of 224,000 to 258,000 people, including 125,000 Iraq civilians.

The economic cost to America is harder to quantify, and no less disturbing.

Through 2012, the Congressional Research Service pegged the estimated cost of war funding at $1.4 trillion. But that figure has been called unduly conservative.

“I don’t know what the president knows, but I wish it were a trillion,” Boston University professor Neta Crawford told Reuters.

A Brown University report co-directed by Crawford estimates that $3.7 trillion to $4.4 trillion has been spent on wartime expenses, mostly on military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Going forward, the report projected these costs:

• Anticipated benefits for veterans through 2050: $589 billion to $934 billion.
• Additional Pentagon appropriations: $326 billion to $652 billion.
• Projected war-related spending between 2012 and 2020: $453 billion.
• Homeland Security spending: $401 billion.
• “Social costs” paid by service members and their families: $295 billion to $400 billion.
• Interest payments for debt incurred from borrowing for war spending: $185 billion.
• War-related foreign aid: $74 billion.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia University economist, calculated the costs between $3 trillion and $5 trillion — and that was three years ago.

“With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion,” Stiglitz wrote in a book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” co-authored with Linda Bilmes.

“The social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable,” Stiglitz said.

Stiglitz argues that the post-9/11 military operations have contributed to America’s “macro-economic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden.”

Among the ill-effects cited by the Nobel Prize-winning economist:

• Disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the U.S.
• The Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom.
• The deficits to which America’s debt-funded wars contributed so mightily are now forcing the United States to face the reality of budget constraints.

‘WAR ECONOMY’ MAKES LESS EFFICIENT USE OF RESOURCES

While defense contractors have profited — for example, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., the maker of Black Hawk helicopters, saw its global sales more than double in

five years to $6.7 billion in 2010 — the benefits have not trickled down.

“There’s a lot of money to be made by war contractors and rent-seeking special interests. But for the economy as a whole there’s a less efficient use of resources,” says Adam Summers, a policy analyst with the libertarian-leaning Reason Foundation in Los Angeles.

Summers disputes the widely held notion that U.S. involvement in World War II revived the nation’s depressed economy.

“Yes, it brought down unemployment by conscripting 30 percent of workers. But productivity went down with the use of elderly workers, women and teenagers. Building tanks didn’t raise the quality of life,” he observed.

“It’s like the [federal] stimulus: Government can’t create wealth.”

Security-minded critics, including Republicans, have bemoaned Washington’s mounting indebtedness to China, and Beijing’s own military expansionism by air and by sea.

Since the war on terror has been financed largely through borrowed money, even patriotically oriented tea party groups have begun to question the ongoing cost of the global mission. They vividly recall the warning President Dwight Eisenhower (who commanded the Allies in Europe during World War II) sounded about the excesses of what he branded the “military industrial complex.”

“Perhaps the most remarkable feature of post-9/11 neoconservative foreign policy was its virtual disregard for economics,” Peter Beinart wrote recently at the Daily Beast website.

“Undergirding post-9/11 neoconservatism was the assumption that the money for a quasi-imperial foreign policy would always be there; and that, if necessary, domestic spending could always be slashed — and perhaps even taxes raised — to make sure the Pentagon was spared the ax. But that assumption no longer holds.

“Forced to choose between health-care spending and military spending, as they increasingly must do, most Democrats will choose the former. And forced to choose between military spending and tax hikes, Republicans in this tea party era will throw the Pentagon under the bus as well.”

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