The £cost of Iraq

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There is a short UK section in The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, published here by Allen Lane - Penguins. There is a grimly amusing passage about how the American authors found the British system "particularly opaque" in hazing over how much of the "Special Reserves" are actually "drawn down" for Iraq expenditure. They foresee total British costs through to 2010 to be over £20 billion - yes that is £££s NOT $$$. For various reasons I think they may have inflated the amount and I am also suspicious of their approach in the Keynesian sense that money spent on, for example, medical support for the injured is also money put into the economy that provides employment. But leaving aside the grim toll of 175 Iraq deaths, over 200 serious injuries and well over 2,000 injuries requiring hospitalisation, there can be little doubt that on the Iraq folly alone (excluding Afghanistan) expenditure will come to more than £10 billion and that this could have been much better spent. Er, to put it mildly.