Current WMC Iraq Series Exclusive
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WMC Iraq Commentary: Whose War? by Tamera GugelmeyerMarch 19
Today is the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and many are asking what four years of war has accomplished—for the people of Iraq, the U.S. and the world. The weeks leading up to the anniversary have been peppered with reports that dramatically highlight the problems: from escalating sectarian violence and troop build-ups to an overstretched VA health care system and the relocation of a corporate headquarters overseas.
Halliburton’s announced move struck me as the most ironic of these reports as I was sipping black tea laced with rich evaporated milk—the way I learned to drink it when I lived in Abu Dhabi, the largest of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. CEO David Lesar and his fellow executives won’t suffer from the move to Dubai, the commercial capital of the U.A.E. The military-industrial complex in neighboring Abu Dhabi where I lived provided bars and exclusive beach clubs for western expats working in the oil industry, former U.S. military personnel cum consultants, and embassy personnel, as well as schools for their children. And it’s much the same in Dubai.
Halliburton has experienced a slate of bad press lately for, among other things, the dealings of soon-to-be-spun-off KBR, the subsidiary that handles service operations for the U.S. military in Iraq. Nevertheless, Halliburton reaped $2.3 billion in profit last year and has seen its stock more than triple in value since 2003. The move to Dubai makes the kind of sense that Halliburton’s shareholders will applaud.
But while Halliburton and others profit, who pays?
As a nation, we’re only just beginning to come to terms with the cost here at home of a war that’s being measured in bodies, shredded limbs and broken minds, as well as U.S. dollars. And both the human and the financial costs are likely to rise as the long-term effects of this war are felt. Vets with serious physical and psychological injuries are returning home to find a VA health care system that is ill equipped to handle the tidal wave of claims that threaten to swamp it.
In 2006 in The Economic Costs of the Iraq War, Harvard University lecturer Linda Bilmes and Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stiglitz found that the Bush administration had grossly underestimated the cost of the war in Iraq. Then in January of this year, Bilmes prepared a follow up study on the long-term costs of providing health care for vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. What she found confirmed what veterans’ advocacy groups have long been warning: with 1.4 million troops deployed over the past five and a half years, 50,000 plus wounded or injured, and more than 3,000 killed in Iraq alone, disability compensation and health care costs are likely to reach $350 billion—and could climb as high as $700 billion over the vets’ lifetimes.
Even more troubling is the 400,000-600,000 claims backlog at the VA and the projected six-month waiting period for a decision. Roughly one-third of vets returning from Iraq seek mental health care, according to a 2006 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This means that some vets, those like Jonathan Schulze who committed suicide in January of this year while waiting for treatment, never get the care they need.
Experts say that women may suffer PTSD at twice the rate of men, yet in a military where, according to Pentagon numbers, more than 160,000 female soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of programs focusing on female vets is tragically small. According to a recent Associated Press story, VA data shows that more than a third of the 24,000 female vets “evaluated from 2002 to [late 2006] had a preliminary diagnosis of a mental disorder.” In addition, the VA found that roughly 20%, or one in five women, report being physically assaulted while on active duty—a factor that places them at greater risk for PTSD. Page 2 >> |
