Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: environment

  • The Hidden Legacy of the Runit Dome

    As a third-year college student, I have struggled my way through enough United States history courses to know that our government has not always acted in the most benevolent of ways in the past, particularly when dealing with smaller, vulnerable countries. I have always liked to think that most of these transgressions, though unacceptable, are at the very least acknowledged by following generations of leadership, and reparations are paid or apologies extended to affected groups. Yet a recent episode of Australia’s ABC TV series Foreign Correspondent, titled “The Dome”, exposes the lasting effects of U.S. Cold War nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, and puts a spotlight on our government’s decades of negligence and disregard for human and environmental well-being in the Pacific—all justified by the need for nuclear dominance.

    The Marshall Islands, a scattering of over 1000 islands and islets halfway between Hawaii and Australia, was ground zero of U.S. nuclear testing after WW2— over 67 nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons were detonated there between 1946-1958. The impacts of these tests on the Marshallese people remain tangible to this day: many were forced into permanent exile from their home islands, which remain uninhabitable due to high radiation levels, and elevated rates of cancer resulting from radioactive fallout continue to plague generations. The trauma from these experiences has been seared into the cultural memory of Marshallese society, and a sense of injustice persists through the generations. One of the episode’s poignant scenes shows schoolchildren singing together: “this is our land, gone are the days we live in fear, fear of bombs, guns, and nuclear [weapons]”.

    Yet decades after the end of U.S.-led nuclear tests in its backyard, the Marshall Islands remain threatened by the equally irresponsible and immoral actions of the world’s biggest superpower. The episode brings us to an island called Runit in the Enewetok atoll. On the island, tons upon tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste sit hidden away under a huge concrete dome. As the episode uncovers, in order to quickly and cheaply dispose of the highly radioactive waste material from its years of testing, the U.S. military dumped the toxic material (including hundreds of chunks of Plutonium) into a crater from a test explosion on the island, hastily covered it with a layer of concrete— and simply left. U.S. officials claimed that “the dome” would hold for a century or more.

    Over the years, time and nature have caught up to what was meant to be a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Built at sea-level over the porous atoll floor, the dome cannot stop seawater seeping in from below with the rise and fall of the tide, leaking potentially radioactive material into the surrounding waters. An even greater threat, cracks and wear on the concrete from years of weather and seawater erosion place the dome at risk of being blown open by a bad storm or typhoon, which would result in a widespread dispersion of nuclear waste across the Pacific. This fact has been acknowledged even by the U.S. government in recent years.

    Sadly, the Marshallese locals are not the only group to suffer from this negligence and mismanagement. The crew of U.S. soldiers who built the dome, told that they were finishing their deployments in a “tropical paradise”, were sent to Runit island without foreknowledge of the radioactive toxins on the island, or the nature of their mission. Working for months building the dome and filling it with the radioactive waste, they shockingly were not issued any manner of safety equipment. As a result, a large proportion of the crew have since developed medical complications such as cancers and reproductive issues, and many have died young. Yet the U.S. still refuses to acknowledge their maladies as resulting from radioactive exposure, and has provided no assistance in covering the staggering medical costs associated with treatment.

    It is outrageous enough that generations of Marshallese people and an outfit of our own soldiers stationed there have had to suffer such injustices as forced relocation, medical complications due to radioactive exposure, and overt exploitation and silencing by the U.S. Yet the mess remains unaddressed, and the emerging Marshallese youth face even greater threats to their way of life. To them, the crater full of radioactive material is the least of their worries. Rising sea levels associated with climate change (caused largely by the negligence of the world’s wealthiest and most privileged nations, like the U.S.) may leave 75% of the islands inundated by 2100. This would decimate the local economy and wipe out a huge proportion of the country’s already limited agricultural land. It also greatly heightens the risk of widespread nuclear contamination occurring from leakage in the dome.

    There is a telling lack of public knowledge and discourse around the U.S. legacy of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands in the United States. The American media has had little to say about either the history or future consequences of the Runit Dome. It seems that as long as the dome is not in our own backyard, we don’t care where it is or who it effects. To the Marshallese, it represents the connection between the Nuclear Age and the Climate Change Age, and puts on full display one of the biggest culprits of both: American apathy. Most didn’t know, act, or care enough to stop nuclear testing in the Pacific during the Cold War, just as many of us don’t know, act, or care enough to halt the cascading effects of climate change today. We must heed the lesson of Runit Dome— a lesson of injustice, negligence, and complicity— and prevent our planet’s future from being doomed by the same indifference. We must stay informed about these issues and others like it, and together hold our government accountable for its actions, keeping in mind how they affect our precious planet and all of its people.

    Watch the episode “The Dome” here: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/the-dome/9198340

  • Making the Connection: The People’s Climate March and the International Day of Peace

    Robert DodgeThis article was originally published by Common Dreams.

    Climate change and world peace will each be highlighted on Sunday September 21, the International Day of Peace. In our nuclear armed, temperature rising, resource depleting world these issues are intricately related and represent the greatest threats to our planet. It is not coincidence that they be highlighted together. We must make the connection between peace on the planet and peace with the environment. Sunday’s Peoples Climate March will empower citizens the world over to demonstrate the will of the people and demand action as global leaders convene in New York on Tuesday for the U.N. Climate Summit.

    As our planet warms causing severe droughts and weather conditions, crop losses at home and around the world, conflict ensues as competition for finite resources develops.  Entire populations and countries are at risk with rising sea levels. Climate change is a catalyst for conflict. This is occurring the world over where 2/3 of global populations live on less than two dollars a day.

    No institution recognizes this connection and threat more than the U.S. military.  In the Pentagon’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, released on March 4, the Department of Defense notes: “The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions—conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.” While Congress is paralyzed in climate deadlock by those who would rather play charades denying climate change for purely short sighted short term economic gains the problem marches critically forward. Climate change is a national and international security threat.

    According to retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni speaking on climate change, “We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives.”

    We have long known of the devastating annihilating potential of all-out nuclear war. Recent medical scientific and climatic reports have shown the humanitarian consequences of even a limited nuclear war using less than half of 1 percent of the global arsenals resulting in significant climatic change that would put 2 billion people at risk of dying from the global famine that would follow.

    Currently U.S. and international cities and governments are rapidly trying to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. While this is understandable it is analogous to someone whose house is flooding trying to mop up without turning off the water first. You can never get ahead of the situation. In climate change we must STOP the process before it is too late.  When medicine deals with public health threats we recognize that we must prevent what we cannot cure. We cannot cure the effects of climate change—we must prevent it!

    So while the military and government makes plans for the effects and conflicts resulting from climate change, the people are stepping up and demanding action to stop the process. There is no more critical time in this effort. We the people demand action. If you are concerned about either issue, you must be concerned about both issues. The future of our planet depends on it.

    Join us on this International Day of Peace in the Peoples Climate March. Make the connection. Demand peace with the planet for peace on the planet.

    To join activities in your area check http://peoplesclimate.org/.

  • Regional Nuclear War Can Spur Climate Change, Famines Around the World: Scientist

    Before 2015, many scientists knew that a “nuclear winter” theoretically could bring major climate change to the world and create famines in many countries. But it wasn’t until the aftermath of the use of a hundred atomic bombs by Pakistan and India – in what was later named the South Asian Nuclear War – that people everywhere began to comprehend the longer-term, global effects of nuclear exchanges. They then understood, to their horror, that there was no such thing as a strictly “regional” nuclear conflict.

    International panels and historians would try with scant success to construct a narrative to explain the unprecedented mass destruction of that summer weekend. The early events of the conflict appear plain enough: Pakistan’s government spent July complaining that India was increasingly engaging in cyber attacks aimed at testing the vulnerability of its neighbor’s nuclear command-and-control computer systems. As tensions mounted, Pakistani troops were dispatched into the Kargil district of the Ladakh region in Jammu and Kashmir — an area officially on India’s side of the “line of control” that divided the restive, mountainous Himalayan state. As with a similar incursion in 1999, India responded with intense air and artillery assaults using conventional weapons.

    While other governments urged calm, several major Pakistani government buildings in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad were destroyed by explosive devices. Indian leaders vehemently denied all culpability. They asserted Pakistani militants or religious extremists likely were trying to take advantage of the latest tumultuous period to provoke a nuclear Armageddon between the rival nations.

    Indian Army and paramilitary forces confronted large crowds in the streets of Srinager, the overwhelmingly Islamic summer capital of Kashmir, as well as other large cities in the region. Two Pakistani military officers then sparked an uproar in India’s media: One  said publicly his nation was ready and willing to give field commanders the authority to use arsenals of small, tactical nuclear weapons to repel any invasion of his country by Indian soldiers. Another leaked word to reporters that Pakistan was mulling the option of detonating a “demonstration” nuclear warhead, far above a large Indian city, to prove it had no squeamishness about using the bombs it possessed.

    July turned to August, and Indian and Pakistani military forces went on full nuclear alert. In preparation for total war, both sides increased the pace of marrying nuclear warheads with missiles and aircraft so they could be used quickly, if needed. Startling the world, India aired TV and radio messages telling citizens to move to their basements – makeshift shelters where many families had already stored emergency food and water after New Delhi recommended it in 2013.

    A high-level team of peace envoys from the U.S., whose jet was heading to the region, was urgently mediating with the two sides by telephone over the Atlantic. Diplomats told a relieved world that tensions between India and her neighbor actually were easing and that more a serious conflict probably could be headed off.

    But subsequent events are much less clear. Dozens of missiles in both nations remained on hair-trigger alert, with a strategic “window” of about three minutes for politicians and officers to decide if an early warning sign was a real attack. Then, a monumental wild card: A meteor the size of a refrigerator, it was later determined, shattered Earth’s atmosphere 80,000 feet over Jaipur, a city of 3 million in northwest India. Breaking thousands of windows, it exploded in the sky with a sonic boom and an approximate blast power of 250 kilotons (compared to the 12.5-kiloton bomb that destroyed Hiroshima).

    The nuclear phase of the war began just eight minutes after the meteor struck. The connection between the meteor and use of missiles by both countries, if any, remains a topic of endless debate. The exchange of missiles persisted for two full days. Approximately 100 nuclear explosions, centering mainly on urban centers, took millions of lives in each country on account of the blasts themselves but also the radiation, hunger and disease that followed. No clear winner emerged.

    The significance of the war for the rest of the world soon dawned. After massive pillars of black smoke and dust rose above the remains of dozens of burned cities, unprecedented pollution traveled around the world and ascended 25 miles to the stratosphere. There the soot was trapped, immune to disruption by rain below. Skies turn from blue to gray.

    Major declines in temperature in all parts of the world followed. Average rainfall declined. Growing seasons in both hemispheres immediately got shorter, as farmers from New England to China saw some crops yield much less than expected and other crops fail altogether.

    Meanwhile, ozone in the atmosphere became massively depleted, and harmful ultraviolet rays at the planet’s surface increased, further injuring plants, causing greater incidence of human illness such as skin cancer, and playing havoc with the biosphere in countless ways.

    The effects would last years. The World Famine of 2015-2025 ultimately was considered the worst catastrophe in mankind’s history – a tragedy affecting billions who had no connection whatsoever to the war that had been its cause. The grime high in the atmosphere lingered for years, absorbing sunlight necessary for plants, animals and people to survive and thrive — and serving to remind an appalled world, every day, of the dark potential of its nuclear technology.

    *

    The above scenario is hypothetical. What’s real, already, is the work of scientists over the past few years who have reinvestigated and revised the theories of nuclear winter that captured world attention in the 1980s. Most Americans probably haven’t thought about nuclear winter since that era, when an all-out war between the U.S. and Soviet Union looked plausible. Back then, everyone from ordinary citizens to journalists to world leaders joined the discussion about how the use of nuclear arms could imperil world ecology and, in the worst case, cause the extinction of all species.

    Alan Robock, now a senior professor in environmental science at Rutgers University, was  a young scientist studying nuclear winter at that time. Today, the 63-year-old researcher is warning anyone who will listen that although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and the risk of a Third World War now appears to be reduced, the danger of nuclear winter persists.

    Robock and a few colleagues have been using cutting-edge computer models to try to foretell the climatic consequences of nuclear explosions in an era when a “local” exchange of nuclear weapons – say, between India and Pakistan – appears more probable than a general world war.

    Scientists such as Robock are asking if we can safely stop viewing nuclear weapons as an ominous threat to the world environment, merely because the arsenals of emerging nuclear powers are relatively small. Robock says absolutely not. To him, the latest ecological predictions are just as chilling as they were three decades ago. They point to prolonged, major climate damage affecting many regions on Earth, with widespread deaths from hunger in many countries. This appears true even if the usage of a “small” number of nuclear weapons was the triggering event.

    NAPF spoke with Robock about his new research, and why he thinks his findings are just as urgent as the well-known nuclear winter studies of the 1980s. He also discusses his frustration that his efforts to stir the interest of government officials, and even fellow scientists, often have been met with what appears to be apathy. The following is an edited version of the conversation.

    KAZEL: Dr. Robock, if you were speaking to a group of Americans who remember scientists’ warnings about nuclear winter back in the 1980s, what would you tell them about your more recent theories and how they’re relevant to today’s world?

    ROBOCK: Thirty years ago, we discovered that a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union could produce a nuclear winter with temperatures plummeting below freezing during the summertime, destroying agriculture around the world and producing a global famine. The indirect effects of nuclear war would be much greater than the direct effects, as horrible as they would be.

    This helped to end the nuclear arms race. Mikhail Gorbachev has been quoted in multiple interviews saying he knew about the work on nuclear winter, which was being done jointly by American and Russian scientists. That was a strong message to him to end the arms race.

    But that was 30 years ago. Now we’re asking two questions. One, even though the arms race is over and the number of weapons is coming down, could we still produce a nuclear winter with the current arsenals? And the answer to that is yes. Even after the New START agreement is implemented in 2017, there will still be enough nuclear weapons in the American and Russian arsenals to produce a full nuclear winter with temperatures below freezing in the summer and global famine. Most people think that the problem has been solved, but it has not.

    The second question is, what would be the consequences of nuclear war between some new nuclear powers, such as India and Pakistan? Imagine…a nuclear war ensues between India and Pakistan, each of them using only 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons. Their weapons might be bigger than that, but we know that’s the simplest to build. So we did a scenario by which each side used 50 Hiroshima-sized weapons. This will be much less than 1 percent of the global nuclear arsenal, and less than half of each of their arsenals.

    It would be horrible. Twenty million people would die. As horrible as that would be, it would produce about 5 million tons of smoke, which would go up in the atmosphere, last for more than a decade, and cause cooling at the Earth’s surface… It would be the coldest temperatures ever experienced in recorded history – temperatures colder than the “Little Ice Age” a couple of hundred years ago, in which there was famine around the world.

    This would cause devastation in the world food market. People would stop trading. There would be a famine and we estimate up to a billion people might die.

    So, we’re in a terrible situation. People don’t realize that the use of nuclear weapons is still the greatest danger that the planet faces. And we have to solve this problem so that we can have the luxury of worrying about global warming – which is also a problem.

    KAZEL: Why have you tended the emphasize the example of India and Pakistan as a possible place where a nuclear war might break out, rather than other areas of the world?

    ROBOCK: There are nine nuclear nations now – the current members of the [U.N.] Security Council – the first five to get nuclear weapons, the U.S., Russian, China, France and England. Then there’s four more. There’s Israel, who doesn’t admit [possessing nuclear weapons], India, Pakistan and North Korea. People think, “Oh, that’s on the other side of the world. We don’t have to worry about it. They only have a few weapons. We can forget about it.” But it’s not true.

    We wanted to emphasize the danger of even a small number of weapons because nuclear proliferation is still a big problem. There are other countries that want to have them.

    There are 40 countries it the world that have highly enriched uranium or plutonium and could make nuclear weapons, if they wanted to. Everybody knows how to make them. Why have they chosen notto? How can we keep them [from choosing otherwise]?  Why doesn’t Japan or Germany or Belgium or Brazil or Argentina have nuclear weapons? They could if they wanted to.

    We wanted to emphasize that it’s much more dangerous to have them than it is to not have them.

    People still thinks it’s “mutually assured destruction” – if Country A attacks Country B, Country B will retaliate, and that’s why we don’t attack them. But it turns out it would be suicide to use nuclear weapons. If you attacked a country, and produced all these fires and smoke, it would come back to haunt you. It would affect your agricultural production.

    KAZEL: Do you see much interest today among researchers around the world in nuclear winter – for example, in Russia and China, or, in particular, India and Pakistan, since this is data that’s especially relevant to them?

    ROBOCK: Unfortunately no, we don’t. We write journal articles, we give talks at conferences. I just gave two talks at a conference in Europe a couple of weeks ago. Colleagues in Switzerland have recently completed a similar climate-model study…The Swiss government has given us a small amount of funding to do this work. But we would like to identify colleagues in Russia to this, and we don’t see any interest.

    I talked to a Pakistani colleague at Princeton and he said, “You know, they’re really proud of this accomplishment, of being able to make nuclear weapons. If you started doing research into this [in Pakistan] to show that they can’t be used [because of environmental dangers], you would be a pariah. People would criticize you as being unpatriotic.”

    Everyone who hears [my findings] gets kind of shocked by the results. Again, it’s kind of an emotional reaction and they don’t really want to hear it. But I’ve not gotten any pushback in terms of the science. Nobody’s been able to find a flaw in our science.

    KAZEL: I noticed in one of your papers you expressed impatience with Global Zero because they haven’t put a spotlight on environmental dangers when they’ve campaigned against nuclear weapons. Do you think antinuclear groups have a responsibility to spread the word about nuclear winter now?

    ROBOCK: Absolutely. That was [an impetus] to the end of the arms race. The first results were quite controversial. Carl Sagan was going around talking about it a lot and there was a lot of debate about it. That made people look again at the direct effects of nuclear weapons and how horrible the direct effects would be.

    People had been ignoring it, and Russia and the U.S. had just been building more and more weapons. This discussion really shocked people into realizing how crazy the arms race was.

    You know, this is an easier problem to solve than global warming. The solution to global warming is to stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that threatens a tremendous economic base of the fossil fuel companies and the energy infrastructure of the planet. It’s a tough struggle, and it’s slow. But nuclear weapons, there’s only a few thousand of them around the world. It’s a small part of the world economy. So this can change much more easily than solving the global warming problem.

    Obama has said he wants to get rid of all nuclear weapons. He is trying to reduce our arsenal, but he could reduce our arsenal unilaterally without waiting for the Russians – and make us safer. Of course, you’ve got to educate people about what nuclear weapons really are in order for them to understand this.

    My senator, Robert Menendez [D-New Jersey], is now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I’m going down to Washington next month to try to do some lobbying and try to talk him into having a hearing about this.

    KAZEL: How active should the scientists of today be in prescribing policy changes? In 2007, you [and a co-author] called for de-alerting of nuclear missiles, elimination of tactical nuclear weapons, ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and phasing out the use of highly enriched uranium. You’ve also said that U.S. and Russian arms reductions have been insufficient and that we could go down to a basic deterrence force of a few hundred nuclear weapons. Are you more willing now to recommend specific policies rather than just supply data to the government and the military?

    ROBOCK: As far as specific policy recommendations, I’m not an expert. I’m an expert in climate. I remember in the 1980s, I was talking to another scientist about this, and he said, our job is just to provide the information and data and let the policymakers decide on the policy. I thought about that and I said, you know, the policymakers spend their careers deciding how to target nuclear weapons, how to use them, how to threaten with them. If they actually accepted our science, they would be out of a job.

    The clear policy implication [of our research] is that you can’t use nuclear weapons, you have to get rid of them. If they accepted that, they’d have to find another line of work. So how can we expect them to change the policy when they have a self-interest in continuing the policy? That’s why I think it’s important for scientists to speak out.

    It’s frustrating because we’re trying to get some more money to support the research. There are a lot of details that still need to be understood. We thought maybe the Department of Defense, which has the nuclear weapons and might use them, or the Department of Energy, which makes the nuclear weapons, or the Department of Homeland Security…might want to fund such studies. In every case, the program managers say, “It’s not my job. It’s somebody else’s job to look at that problem.”

    Obama understands these issues and wants to do the right thing, but he needs somebody to push him. He needs a movement. He needs a lot of people to be concerned about it. People think that [the nuclear weapons] problem has faded away and there are more important concerns in their lives. They don’t feel threatened like they did in the past.

    KAZEL: Apparently there is a common misconception that nuclear winter theories have been, at some point in the past, discredited or overstated. You’ve written about this.

    ROBOCK: As Bob Dylan says, “How does it feel?” It feels better to believe it’s not going to be winter, even though it’s wrong. Because the arms race is over, because nobody talks about it anymore, people think the problem has disappeared.

    We had this new modern-climate model, with which we did the India-Pakistan case with. We said, let’s go back and see, is it really nuclear winter? People said maybe it wouldn’t be nuclear winter, maybe it would be nuclear “fall.” We found the smoke would stay [in the upper atmosphere] for many years. Nobody knew that before. We found that indeed it would get below freezing in the summertime.

    We [also] repeated the simulations we did 30 years ago. Those used a third of the nuclear arsenals on the U.S. and Russian side and produced 150 million tons of smoke. So we said, how much smoke would only 4,000 weapons produce – 2,000 on each side? And we could still get 150 million tons of smoke, the same as you’d get with the much larger arsenals of the past. You’d still produce nuclear winter. So it’s still way too many weapons.

    KAZEL: In trying to demonstrate the gravity of nuclear winter, how do you convey to the public that this is potentially catastrophic? For instance, after a regional nuclear exchange, you predict average cooling would decrease two to three degrees Fahrenheit for several years. Some crops would have their growing season shortened by a couple of weeks. Those numbers may not seem dramatic to a non-scientist.

    ROBOCK: We found a 10 to 20 percent reduction in the corn and soybean crop in the United States for years [following an India-Pakistan nuclear war]. We found the same thing for rice production in China for years. That brings rice production in China down to what it was when there were 300 million fewer Chinese people.

    Everyone wouldn’t instantly die of starvation, but the food supplies in grain-growing regions would shrink around the world by 20 percent for a decade. That would put a huge strain on the global food trade.

    Ira Helfand [co-president of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War] wrote an article saying there might be a billion people at risk of starvation because they’re now living marginal existences. They depend on imported food. There would be nobody to come in to help them. There would be no stores of food.

    KAZEL: In looking back at the media attention paid to nuclear winter in the 1980s, a huge spotlight was placed on Carl Sagan. He first warned about it in an article in Parademagazine. He was on “The Tonight Show” dozens of times and testified before committees of Congress. He was called “the people’s scientist.” Do you think the strong interest in nuclear winter at that time was an anomaly because he was so charismatic and well known, whereas today there’s no scientist like that who can stir up interest?

    ROBOCK: Yes. We’ve thought about and we agree with that. We thought to get [astrophysicist] Neil deGrasse Tyson interested. He’s going to be doing a new version of the “Cosmos” show with Carl’s widow, [writer-producer] Ann Druyan. He’s the only scientist I know who even comes close to Carl.

    We also tried to get Al Gore interested, because he’s got a global audience when he talks about climate. But he wasn’t interested.

    So yes, we need somebody like that to give the message. We’re trying to get a Hollywood screenplay written, and do a movie about this. I think using popular culture would get a lot of people’s attention. We haven’t gotten there yet.

    KAZEL: That’s interesting. Could it possibly take a blockbuster movie, like [the 1980s nuclear-war TV special] “The Day After,” to shock people into caring again?

    ROBOCK: Yes, absolutely. We met a guy who’s a scientist but also writes screenplays. He’s working on it for us. We’ll see how that goes.

    KAZEL: In a previous interview, you criticized the mainstream media for how it covers science. You said the media spread errors, that general-assignment reporters are allowed to write about science even though they lack the knowledge for it, and that coverage of science is often sensational. You also said scientists should stop relying on the media and find their own ways to reach the public.

    ROBOCK: Sagan didn’t rely on reporters. He had his own TV show, “Cosmos.” As you say, he went on “The Tonight Show” and talked directly to the audience, without reporters involved. He wrote a book [in 1990, The Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, with UCLA atmospheric scientist Richard Turco]. He wrote articles.

    But the people don’t want to hear this. So you need somebody like Carl. It would be great if we had somebody like him around to give this message.

    Robert Kazel is a Chicago-based freelance writer and was a participant in the 2012 NAPF Peace Leadership Workshop.

  • Once Upon a Time Can Be Now: Rescuing Planet Earth and Restoring Paradise

    David KriegerFairy tales often begin with the words, “Once upon a time….”  For example, “Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess….”  In a fairy tale, the hero, perhaps a handsome prince, may kill the dragon and rescue the princess, and they “live happily ever after.”  I want to suggest a fairy tale in which there is a beautiful planet and the heroes and heroines who save it are us.  So, here is a fairy tale about saving a planet in distress.  Our challenge is to bring this fairy tale to life.


    Once upon a time there was a beautiful and pristine planet.  It was the third planet in a remote solar system in a vast galaxy of stars.  While it might have seemed like an ordinary planet, if anything, rather on the small side, it was far from ordinary.  It was, in fact, a very special planet, for it had just the right climate and temperature to support life.  On this planet there were oceans and continents and mountains and rivers, and they teemed with life.  There were broad plains with grasses that rippled in the winds; hillsides covered with wildflowers; trees that spread their branches and bore fruits.  And there were animals of every shape and kind: fish that swam, birds that flew, and animals that hopped and jumped and ran.  This planet had sunrises and sunsets and a night sky filled with twinkling stars.  Compared with the harsh, lifeless planets that filled the solar system, it was a paradise. 


    And into this paradise came a featherless bi-ped capable of knowing.  He called himself man, and he called the paradise he inhabited Earth.  He devised stories about his own creation, stories that helped to explain the mystery of being — the mystery of something emerging from nothing.  Man was clever and he created tools that gave him power over other creatures, even though he was not as strong or fast or agile as they were.  He created powerful gods in his own image and then had those imaginary creatures bestow upon him dominion over all that swam and flew and ran.  Man took charge of the planet.


    Man’s most recent creation story, the science-based creation story, is that the universe grew from a “Big Bang” some 15 billion years ago, and it has been expanding ever since.  Earth was created 4.5 billion years ago and a half-billion years later simple forms of life emerged on Earth.  Early forms of man in this creation story came into existence only a few million years ago and more modern forms of man only some 50,000 years ago.  Only in the past eight to ten thousand years have human civilizations emerged.


    While the science-based creation story gives a skeletal outline of the development of the universe, its large numbers are difficult to grasp.  It is helpful to think of them in terms of a very big 15,000-page book.  Each page of the book represents a million years in the history of the universe.  The “Big Bang” occurs at the top of page one.  It is not until page 10,500 that the Earth is created and not until page 11,000 that life begins on Earth.  It is not until page 14,997 that primitive forms of man come into being.  Assuming that each word on each page represents 1,000 years, it is only in the final ten words on the final page of the book that civilization begins.  Civilization reflects a larger-scale ordering of society, characterized by agriculture, hierarchy and specialization.  Civilization gives rise to larger and larger tribal loyalties, to competing social systems and to increasingly virulent warfare. 


    It is only within the last two or three words of the book that Isaiah, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Zoroaster, Jesus and other spiritual leaders walk the planet.  But, despite their lives and the moral lessons they teach, warfare becomes more prominent within and among human societies.  Man increases his skill in organizing to engage in the large-scale slaughter of other men.  Over the millennia, man develops ever more powerful weapons with which to kill his fellow man.  He advances in the technology of weaponry from stones to spears to arrows to swords to guns to modern artillery and bombs, and finally, to nuclear and then thermonuclear weapons. 


    In describing our time, the Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, writes, “The planet had been parceled out among various countries, each one provided with loyalties, cherished memories, with a past undoubtedly heroic, with rights, with wrongs, with a particular mythology, with bronze forefathers, with anniversaries, with demagogues and symbols.  This arbitrary division was favorable for wars.”  Our time has been favorable for wars, but the development of our technologies of warfare and the resources we have devoted to war and its preparations have made wars unfavorable for us.


    It is not until the final punctuation mark on the final page of the 15,000-page book that the Nuclear Age begins with three explosions: a test explosion at Alamogordo, New Mexico, followed by the destruction of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki.  In only seven or eight more years, man had created thermonuclear weapons, and two of the many “arbitrary divisions” of the planet that man calls countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, were engaged in a mad nuclear arms race.  It was in this period, the Nuclear Age, that man arrived at a new juncture in his history, one in which his weaponry had become powerful enough to destroy himself and most other forms of complex life on the planet.  In doing so, man had made himself a godlike creature, a god of savagery and destruction.  He now held his fate in his own hands. 


    The final punctuation mark in the 15,000-page book is now being determined.  It may be thought of as a question mark, and the question is: will man be able to summon the will and strength to control his most dangerous technologies and continue his own history, along with that of the remarkable planet on which he lives, on page 15,001?  It may instead be a dramatic exclamation point, another “Big Bang,” this one created by man himself, bringing a cataclysmic end to human life on the planet.
    In many ways, man has taken the beautiful and pristine planet that he inherited from the cosmos and undermined its sustainability.  Man’s powerful technologies combined with his greed threaten the climate and health of the planet.  His waste and pollution are poisoning the planet and its creatures.  Disparities in wealth have turned the planet into a hell for many of the poorest among us.  Man has not been a good trustee of the planet for future generations.  But the most urgent issue of sustainability confronting man is the threat posed by the nuclear arsenals he has created, an issue that has received very little public attention, particularly since the end of the Cold War some two decades ago. 
    The principal points that I want to make are these: first, we are destroying our paradise by our own actions; second, nuclear weapons are incompatible with a sustainable future; and third, the future is in our collective hands.  We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us.  We must also abolish war as a means of settling our conflicts.  By doing so, we would release vast amounts of capital and human creativity.
    At the height of the nuclear arms race in the mid-1980s, there were over 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world, primarily in the arsenals of the United States and Soviet Union.  These weapons were capable of destroying complex life on Earth many times over.  On many occasions, man has come close to a nuclear war – by accident, miscalculation or design – that could have ended the human future on the planet.  Perhaps the most serious of these occasions was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the US and former Soviet Union almost stumbled over the precipice.  The Nuclear Age has been characterized by its policies of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), with opposing sides locked in a life-and-death struggle that would be both suicidal (death of self) and omnicidal (death of all).


    Although the world’s nuclear arsenals have been reduced by over 50,000 nuclear weapons in the past 25 years, there are still slightly under 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  These remain largely in the arsenals of the US and Russia, but also in those of seven other countries: the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  Two decades after the end of the Cold War, large numbers of nuclear weapons remain on high alert 24 hours a day, and there has been an unfortunate lack of political leadership for ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.


    Most of us are aware of the direct effects of nuclear weapons that result from blast, fire and radiation.  At Hiroshima, some 90,000 people died immediately from the US atomic bombing on August 6, 1945, some being vaporized and leaving shadows etched into stone walls behind where they had been at the time of the explosion.  By the end of 1945, the death toll in Hiroshima had risen to 145,000.  For the survivors of the atomic bombings, the suffering and trauma continues even until today.  Soon the survivors will all be gone, and there will be no first-hand witnesses to the horror of nuclear weapons.


    The indirect effects of nuclear weapons use, we now know from the studies of atmospheric scientists, would be even worse than the direct effects.  A regional war between India and Pakistan, for example, in which each side used 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities and industrial areas, would have devastating global effects.  The smoke from burning fires would rise into the stratosphere, blocking warming sunlight, lowering global temperatures to the lowest experienced in the last 1,000 years, and shortening growing seasons.  Hundreds of millions of people would likely perish in the resulting global famine. 


    These consequences, as horrendous as they are, would pale in comparison to those in a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia, whose launch-ready, operational nuclear arsenals have a combined explosive power more than 500 times greater than those of India and Pakistan.  Such an exchange would result in global temperatures becoming colder than those experienced in the last Ice Age, some 18,000 years ago.  This radical climate change, along with the destruction of the ozone layer, would create conditions on Earth that would likely result in the extinction of most or all complex forms of life on the planet.


    This is the threat that we live with every moment of each day.  Could it happen?  Of course, it could.  We ignore it at our peril.  We cannot be naïve enough to believe that humans can create fool-proof systems.  To understand this, we need only recall the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, or the many close calls we have had with nuclear weapons, including accidents and false warnings of nuclear attacks.


    Not long ago, I was arrested for protesting the launch of a US Minuteman III missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base, not far from where I live in California.  The Minuteman III is a land-based, nuclear-armed missile.  There are 450 of them in silos in Montana, Wyoming and North Dakota.  They are launch-ready, first-strike weapons.  If there is a warning – including a false warning – of attack against the United States, there will be pressure for the US to use these weapons before they are destroyed in their silos.  The same is true of the Russian land-based, nuclear-armed missiles.  They will have the same pressure to use them before incoming missiles could destroy them in their silos.  The land-based, nuclear-armed missile forces of both sides should be thought of as Nuclear Doomsday Machines.  They are triggers for World War III, what would undoubtedly be a short and cataclysmic war.


    The US and Russian presidents would have only a few minutes, perhaps 12 minutes at the most, to evaluate a warning of attack and decide whether or not to launch their own missiles and initiate World War III.  This is an intolerable situation.  President Mikhail Gorbachev recognized this when he said, “It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason.”  This is sound advice.  We mortals, all of us, are not gods, and none of us should be trusted with nuclear weapons when the future of our planet, our species and other forms of life are in our hands.  All of us are threatened by the power of our nuclear arsenals and the all-too-real possibilities of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine.


    When I began, I spoke about the paradise of our Earth, the only place we know of in the universe where there is life.  Our minimum responsibility, in return for living on this planet, is to pass the planet on intact and sustainable to the next generation.  Our technologies of warfare have made this far more challenging than in the past, but we must not fail in confronting the threats posed by nuclear weapons and war. 


    To end the urgent threats of nuclear proliferation, nuclear war and nuclear famine, we must abolish nuclear weapons.  This will require leadership from great states and from great individuals within those states.  Nuclear weapons are illegal under international law, immoral and costly.  Rather than being considered a source of prestige, they should be taboo, like cannibalism and slavery.  We should demand that all states begin negotiations immediately on a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.  In the meantime, while this treaty is being negotiated, we should demand that all nuclear weapon states adopt policies of No Use of these weapons against non-nuclear weapon states and No First Use against other nuclear weapon states.  To support such policies and give them credence, nuclear weapon states should separate their warheads from delivery vehicles on land-based missiles, so there will not be temptation to use them first in the event of a false warning.  Finally, before the US proceeds with further deployment of missile defense installations in Europe, it should take seriously Russian security concerns and conduct a joint threat assessment with Russia.


    The abolition of nuclear weapons is our responsibility.  We should take care of it promptly, with the urgency it demands, and not allow this global threat to be passed on to our children and grandchildren.  Then we should dedicate ourselves to doing more than this minimum for survival and take steps to assure the restoration of Earth to being the paradise it was and could be again.  An international appeal for the 2012 RIO + 20 conference, initiated by the International Peace Bureau and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility, points out these important linkages: “Without disarmament, there will be no adequate development; without development, there will be no justice, equality and peace.  We must give sustainability a chance.”


    In 1955, a group of scientists, led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, issued the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which stated, “There lies before us, if we choose, continued progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom.  Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?  We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.  If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”


    It is up to us to choose.  Let us choose peace and hope and a sustainable future.  May we show by our actions that we take seriously our roles as trustees of the Earth for our children and their children and all children of the future – that they may enjoy a peaceful and harmonious life on our planetary home. 

  • Earth Day

    David Krieger


    Vaya aquí para la versión española.


    We live in a vast universe made up of billions of galaxies, each of which is made up of billions of stars.  Our home is a small planet that revolves around a small sun in a remote galaxy.  It is just the right distance from the sun that it is not too hot and not too cold to support life.  It has air that is breathable, water that is drinkable, and topsoil suitable for growing crops.  In the immensity of space, it is a very small dot, what astrophysicist Carl Sagan referred to as a “pale blue dot.”  Our Earth is the only place we know of that harbors life.  It is precious beyond any riches that could be imagined. 


    One would think that any sane, self-reflecting creatures that lived on this planet would recognize its beauty and preciousness and would want to tend to it with care.  In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic book, The Little Prince, the prince says, “It’s a matter of discipline.  When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet.”  But that is an imaginary planet with an imaginary little prince.  On the real planet that supports life, the one we inhabit, there aren’t enough of us who exercise such discipline and tend to our planet with loving care.


    Think about how we have managed our planet.  We have allowed the planet to become divided into rich and poor, where a few people have billions of dollars and billions of people have few dollars.  While some live in greed, the majority live in need.  We have parceled the planet into entities we call countries and created borders that countries try to protect.  We have created military forces in these countries and given them enormous resources to prepare for war and to engage in war.  Annual global military expenditures now exceed $1.6 trillion, while hundreds of millions of humans live without clean water, adequate nutrition, medical care and education.


    We have eagerly exploited the planet’s resources with little concern for future generations or for the damage we cause to the environment.  Instead of using renewable energy from the sun to provide our energy needs, we exploit the Earth’s stores of oil and transport them across the globe.  We have turned much of the world into desert.  We have polluted the air we breathe and the water we drink.  In our excess, we have pushed the planet toward the point of no return in global warming, and then argued global warming as a reason to build more nuclear power plants.


    We keep relearning in tragic ways that we humans are fallible creatures.  That is the lesson of our recurrent oil spills.  It is also the lesson of the accidents at Chernobyl a quarter century ago and at Fukushima one year ago.  It is a lesson that we urgently need to learn about nuclear weapons – weapons we have come close to accidentally using on many occasions and have twice used intentionally. 


    Nuclear weapons kill directly by blast, fire and radiation.  The nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small in comparison with today’s thermonuclear weapons.  In recent years, we have learned some new things about nuclear war.  Atmospheric scientists have modeled a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which each side uses 50 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons on the other side’s cities.  In addition to the direct effects of the weapons, there would be significant indirect effects on the environment.  Smoke from the burning cities would rise into the stratosphere and reduce warming sunlight for ten years, which would lower average surface temperatures, reduce growing seasons and lead to global famine that could kill hundreds of millions of people. 


    That would be the result of a small nuclear war, using less than one percent of the operationally deployed nuclear weapons on the planet.  A nuclear war between the US and Russia could lead to the extinction of most or all complex life on Earth, including human life.  As we celebrate Earth Day this year, 20 years after the end of the Cold War, both the US and Russia maintain hundreds of launch-ready, land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles on high-alert status, ready to be fired in moments.


    We who are alive today are the trustees of this planet for future generations.  We’re failing in our responsibility to pass it on intact.  We need a new Earth ethic that embraces our responsibility for fairness to each other and to the future.  We need new ways of educating that do not simply accept the status quo.  We need to trade in our patriotism for a global humatriotism.  We need a new approach to economics based on what is truly precious – life and the conditions that support it. 


    Earth Day will have its greatest value if it reminds us to care for our Earth and each other all the other days of the year, individually and through our public policy.  We need to inspire people throughout the world, young and old alike, with a vision of the beauty and wonder of the Earth that we can now enjoy, restore and preserve for future generations if we tend to our planet with the discipline of the little prince. 

  • References on High Alert and Nuclear Famine Dangers

    Bruce Blair, “Keeping Presidents in the Nuclear Dark,” Bruce Blair’s Nuclear Column (Episode #2:  The SIOP Option that Wasn’t), Feb. 16, 2004. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/blair/launch-on-warning.cfm

    Bruce G. Blair,”A Rebuttal of the U.S. Statement on the Alert Status of U.S. Nuclear Forces,” October 13, 2007. Retrieved from http://lcnp.org/disarmament/opstatus-blair.htm

    Bruce G. Blair, Harold Feiveson and Frank N. von Hippel, “Who’s Got the Button? Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert,” Scientific American, November 1997. Retrieved from http://www.cdi.org/aboutcdi/SciAmerBB

    False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks during 1979-80 Led to Alert Actions for U.S. Strategic Forces; National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 371 Posted – March 1, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb371/index.htm

    Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers, Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, Co-Chairs. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Reference/reports/ent/part-ii-2.html

    Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger, “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 64, No. 3, pp. 14-21 DOI: 10.2968/064003005. Retrieved from http://www.thebulletin.org/files/064003005.pdf

    ICAN Nuclear Weapons Convention: http://icanw.org/nuclear-weapons-convention

    M.Mills, O. Toon, R. Turco, D. Kinnison and R. Garcia, “Massive Global Ozone Loss Predicted Following Regional Nuclear Conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Apr 8, 2008, Vol 105(14), pp. 5307-12. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/content/105/14/5307.abstract

    A. Robock, L. Oman and G. Stenchikov, “Nuclear Winter Revisited with a Modern Climate Model and Current Nuclear Arsenals: Still Catastrophic Consequences,” Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Vol. 112, No. D13, 2007. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockNW2006JD008235.pdf

    A. Robock, L. Oman, G. L. Stenchikov, O. B. Toon, C. Bardeen and R. Turco, “Climatic Consequences of Regional Nuclear Conflicts,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, p. 2003-2012. Retrieved from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.org/7/2003/2007/acp-7-2003-2007.pdf

    O.B.Toon, R. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G. Stenchikov, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism”, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vol. 7, 2007, pp. 1973-2003. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/acp-7-1973-2007.pdf

    O.B. Toon and A. Robock, “2010:  Local Nuclear War, Global Suffering,”  Scientific American, 302, 74-81. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSciAmJan2010.pdf

    O. Toon, A. Robock and R. Turco, “The Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War,” Physics Today, vol. 61, No. 12, 2008. Retrieved from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf

    S. Starr, “Catastrophic Climatic Consequences of Nuclear Conflict,” International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, December 2009. Retrieved from http://icnnd.org/Documents/Starr_Nuclear_Winter_Oct_09.pdf

    S. Starr, “Launch-Ready Nuclear Weapons: A Threat to All Nations and Peoples,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, August 2011. Retrieved from https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/2011_06_24_starr.pdf

    http://www.nucleardarkness.org

  • Climate Change, Nuclear Risks and Nuclear Disarmament: From Security Threats to Sustainable Peace

    2011_05_17_scheffran_climate.pdf

  • Why We Wage Peace

    Some things are worth Waging Peace for: our planet and its diverse life forms, including humankind; our children and their dreams; our common future.  All of these are threatened by the possibility of nuclear catastrophe.

    We live on an amazing planet, the only one we know of in the universe that supports life, and does so in abundance and diversity.  Our planet is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are despoiling and ruining its delicate and beautiful environment.  

    On our unique planet are creatures of all shapes and sizes: Birds that fly, fish that swim, animals that inhabit jungles and deserts, mountains and plains, rivers and oceans.  Life is worth Waging Peace for – against those who are disrespecting and destroying the habitats of creatures great and small.

    Among the diverse creatures on our planet are human beings.  We are homo sapiens, the knowing ones, and are relative newcomers to the planet.  Yet, our impact has been profound.  We are creatures capable of learning and loving, of being imaginative and inventive, of being compassionate and kind.  We are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would diminish us by undermining our dignity and human rights.

    Human beings, like other forms of life, produce offspring who are innocent and helpless at birth.  These human children, all children, require care and nurturing as they grow to maturity.  The world’s children are worth Waging Peace for – against those who would threaten their future with war and other forms of overt and structural violence.

    Children as they grow have dreams of living happy and decent lives, dreams of building a better future in peaceful and just societies.  These dreams are worth Waging Peace for – against those whose myopia and greed rob children anywhere of a better future.

    Each generation shares a responsibility to pass the planet and civilization on intact to the next generation.  Accepting this responsibility is an important part of Waging Peace.  It is a way of paying a debt of gratitude to all who have preceded us on the planet by assuring that there is a better future.

    In the Nuclear Age, we humans, by our cleverness, have invented tools capable of our own demise.  Nuclear weapons are not really weapons; they are instruments of annihilation and perhaps of omnicide, the death of all.  Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age requires that we awaken to the dangers that these weapons pose to humankind and all life, and work to rid the world of these insane tools of global devastation.

    For too long humanity has lived with nuclear policies of Mutually Assured Destruction, with the appropriate acronym of MAD.  We need a new and distinctly different formulation: Planetary Assured Security and Survival, with the acronym PASS for passing the world on intact to the next generation.

    Among the greatest obstacles to assuring survival in the Nuclear Age are ignorance, apathy, complacency and despair.  These can only be overcome by education and advocacy; education to raise awareness of what needs to change and advocacy to increase engagement in bringing about the needed change.   

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation has three major goals: the abolition of nuclear weapons, the strengthening of international law, and the empowerment of new peace leaders.   The Foundation was created in 1982 in the belief that peace is an imperative of the Nuclear Age and that the people must lead their leaders if we are to assure a safe and secure human future.  We need your generous support to continue to educate and advocate for a brighter future for humanity.

  • Costs of the Iraq War

    Key Findings

    1. U.S. Military Casualties Have Been Highest During the “Transition”: U.S. military casualties (wounded and killed) stand at a monthly average of 747 since the so-called “transition” to Iraqi rule on June 28, 2004. This contrasts with a monthly average of 482 U.S. military casualties during the invasion (March 20-May 1, 2003) and a monthly average of 415 during the occupation (May 2, 2003- June 28, 2004).

    2. Non-Iraqi Contractor Deaths Have Also Been Highest During the”Transition”: There has also been a huge increase in the average monthly deaths of U.S. and other non-Iraqi contractors since the “transition.” On average, 17.5 contractors have died each month since the June 28 “transition,” versus 7.6 contractor deaths per month during the previous 14 months of occupation.

    3. Estimated Strength of Iraqi Resistance Skyrockets: Because the U.S. military occupation remains in place, the “transition” has failed to win Iraqi support or diminish Iraqi resistance to the occupation. According to Pentagon estimates, the number of Iraqi resistance fighters has quadrupled between November of 2003 and early September 2004, from 5,000 to 20,000. The Deputy Commander of Coalition forces in Iraq , British Major General Andrew Graham, indicated to Time magazine in early September that he thinks the 20,000 estimate is too low; he estimates Iraqi resistance strength at 40,000-50,000. This rise is even starker when juxtaposed to Brookings Institution estimates that an additional 24,000 Iraqi resistance fighters have been detained or killed between May 2003 and August 2004.

    4. U.S.- led Coalition Shrinks Further After “Transition”: The number of countries identified as members of the Coalition backing the U.S.-led war started with 30 on March 18, 2003, then grew in the early months of the war. Since then, eight countries have withdrawn their troops and Costa Rica has demanded to be taken off the coalition list. At the war’s start, coalition countries represented 19.1 percent of the world’s population; today, the remaining countries with foces in Iraq represent only 13.6 percent of the world’s population.

    HUMAN COSTS TO THE U.S. AND ALLIES

    U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and September 22, 2004, 1,175 coalition forces were killed, including 1,040 U.S. military. Of the total, 925 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 7,413 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, 6,953 (94 percent) since May 1, 2003.

    Contractor Deaths: As of September 22, 2004, there has been an estimated 154 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths since May 1, 2004. Of these, 52 have been identified as Americans.

    Journalist Deaths: Forty-four international media workers have been killed in Iraq as of September 22, 2004, including 33 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

    SECURITY COSTS

    Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda’s membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq . The State Department’s 2003 “Patterns of Global Terrorism,” documented 625 deaths and 3,646 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. The report acknowledged that “significant incidents,” increased from 60 percent of total attacks in 2002 to 84 percent in 2003.

    Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government’s standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 52 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq.

    Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq , the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

    Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

    Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq . Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are “first responders,” including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country’s police forces have lost officers to Iraq . In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

    Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

    ECONOMIC COSTS

    The Bill So Far: Congress has approved of $151.1 billion for Iraq. Congressional leaders anticipate an additional supplemental appropriation of $60 billion after the election.

    Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household.

    Oil Prices: U.S. crude oil prices spiked at $48 per barrel on August 19, 2004, the highest level since 1983, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

    Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan , 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased “several hundred percent” between 2002 and 2003.

    SOCIAL COSTS

    U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration’s combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. A leaked memo from the White House to domestic agencies outlines major cuts following the election, including funding for education, Head Start, home ownership, job training, medical research and homeland security.

    Social Costs to the Military: In order to meet troop requirements in Iraq, the Army has extended the tours of duty for soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

    Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 7,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans’ groups.

    Mental Health Costs: The New England Journal of Medicine reported in July 2004 that 1 in 6 soldiers returning from war in Iraq showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, or severe anxiety. Only 23 to 40 percent of respondents in the study who showed signs of a mental disorder had sought mental health care.

    COSTS TO IRAQ

    HUMAN COSTS

    Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of September 22, 2004, between 12,800 and 14,843 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During “major combat” operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

    Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in southern Iraq.

    Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

    Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll conducted by the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies in June 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis believe that coalition forces should leave either immediately or directly after the election.

    ECONOMIC COSTS

    Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, the U.S. is only employing 120,000 Iraqis, of a workforce of 7 million, in reconstruction projects.

    Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq ‘s reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires. Iraq ‘s Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 118 attacks on Iraq ‘s oil infrastructure since June 2003. By September 2004, oil production still had not reached pre-war levels and major attacks caused oil exports to plummet to a ten- month low in August 2004.

    SOCIAL COSTS

    Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq ‘s health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq ‘s hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

    Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein.

    Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country’s fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexploded ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

    HUMAN RIGHTS COSTS

    Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and torture of prisoners, abuse has been widespread throughout the post-9-11 military operations, with over 300 allegations of abuse in Afghanistan , Iraq and Guantánamo. As of mid-August 2004, only 155 investigations into the existing 300 allegations had been completed.

    SOVEREIGNTY COSTS

    Despite the proclaimed “transfer of sovereignty” to Iraq , the country continues to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and has severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government does not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by former CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq ‘s state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.

    COSTS TO THE WORLD

    HUMAN COSTS

    While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq , other U.S.-allied “coalition” troops have suffered 135 war casualties in Iraq . In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

    DISABLING INTERNATIONAL LAW

    The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be “pre-empted.” The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

    UNDERMINING THE UNITED NATIONS

    At every turn, the Bush Administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution’s capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter. It was on this basis that Secretary General Annan referred specifically to the vantage point of the UN Charter in his September 2004 finding that the war was illegal.

    ENFORCING COALITIONS

    Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called “Coalition of the Willing.” This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent. As of the middle of September, only 29 members of the “Coalition of the Willing” had forces in Iraq , in addition to the United States . These countries, combined with United States , make up less than 14 percent of the world’s population.

    COSTS TO THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

    The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Already, the world’s major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

    UNDERMINING GLOBAL SECURITY AND DISARMAMENT

    The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department’s annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed “significant” than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

    GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL COSTS

    U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq ‘s land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River , for example, flows through Iraq , Iran and Kuwait.

    HUMAN RIGHTS

    The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military and intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.

    Prepared by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus

  • Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

    A Study by the Institute for Policy Studies
    and Foreign Policy In Focus

    Key Findings

    I. Costs to the United States

    A. Human Costs

    U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 836 U.S. military. Of the total, 693 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 5,134 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, including 4,593 since May 1, 2003.

    Contractor Deaths: Estimates range from 50 to 90 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths. Of these, 36 were identified as Americans.

    Journalist Deaths: Thirty international media workers have been killed in Iraq, including 21 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

    B. Security Costs

    Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda’s membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq. A former CIA analyst and State Department official has documented 390 deaths and 1,892 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. In addition, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world in 2003, more than any year in contemporary history.

    Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government’s standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 54 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey felt that the “the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over.”

    Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

    Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

    Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq. Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are “first responders,” including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country’s police forces have lost officers to Iraq. In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

    Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

    C. Economic Costs

    The Bill So Far: Congress has already approved of $126.1 billion for Iraq and an additional $25 billion is heading towards Congressional approval, for a total of $151.1 billion through this year. Congressional leaders have promised an additional supplemental appropriation after the election.

    Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household. Another economist, James Galbraith of the University of Texas, predicts that while war spending may boost the economy initially, over the long term it is likely to bring a decade of economic troubles, including an expanded trade deficit and high inflation.

    Oil Prices: Gas prices topped $2 a gallon in May 2004, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to a mid-May CBS survey, 85 percent of Americans said they had been affected measurably by higher gas prices. According to one estimate, if crude oil prices stay around $40 a barrel for a year, U.S. gross domestic product will decline by more than $50 billion.

    Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased “several hundred percent” between 2002 and 2003.

    D. Social Costs

    U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration’s combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. Instead, the administration’s FY 2005 budget request proposes deep cuts in critical domestic programs and virtually freezes funding for domestic discretionary programs other than homeland security. Federal spending cuts will deepen the budget crises for local and state governments, which are expected to suffer a $6 billion shortfall in 2005.

    Social Costs to the Military: Thus far, the Army has extended the tours of duty of 20,000 soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

    Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans’ groups.

    Mental Health Costs: A December 2003 Army report was sharply critical of the military’s handling of mental health issues. It found that more than 15 percent of soldiers in Iraq screened positive for traumatic stress, 7.3 percent for anxiety, and 6.9 percent for depression. The suicide rate among soldiers increased from an eight-year average of 11.9 per 100,000 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2003. Almost half of soldiers surveyed reported not knowing how to obtain mental health services.

    II. Costs to Iraq

    A. Human Costs

    Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of June 16, 2004, between 9,436 and 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During “major combat” operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

    Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in Southern Iraq.

    B. Security Costs

    Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

    Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis say they have “no confidence” in either the U.S. civilian authorities or in the coalition forces, and 55 percent would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country immediately.

    C. The Economic Costs

    Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, only 1 percent of Iraq’s workforce of 7 million is involved in reconstruction projects.

    Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq’s reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires.

    Iraq’s Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 130 attacks on Iraq’s oil infrastructure. In 2003, Iraq’s oil production dropped to 1.33 million barrels per day, down from 2.04 million in 2002.

    Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq’s health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq’s hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

    Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Largely because of security concerns, school attendance in April 2004 was well below pre-war levels.

    Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country’s fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexposed ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

    Human Rights Costs: Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and abuse of prisoners, the U.S. military is investigating the deaths of 34 detainees as a result of interrogation techniques.

    Sovereignty Costs: Despite the proclaimed “transfer of sovereignty” to Iraq, the country will continue to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and have severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government will not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.

    III. Costs to the World

    Human Costs: While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied “coalition” troops have suffered 116 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

    International Law: The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be “pre-empted.” The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

    The United Nations: At every turn, the Bush administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution’s capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The recent efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter.

    Coalitions: Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called “Coalition of the Willing.” This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent.

    Global Economy: The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Already, the world’s major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

    Global Security: The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department’s annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed “significant” than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

    Global Environment: U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq’s land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River, for example, flows through Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.

    Human Rights: The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.