Just an interesting report from globalsecurity.org thought some might find it interesting.
...-Gixer
Critics worry Iraq operation hurts U.S. economy, credibility; backers say it pays dividends
In-Depth Coverage
By Ron French
There is one less America-hating dictator, but millions more Muslims across the world who distrust America, according to polls. Iraq is trying to slog toward democracy, but President George Bush's popularity is declining.
The world is a better place without Saddam Hussein, and America may be safer. But Saddam's removal has cost America tens of billions of dollars and 560 lives.
It's an unexpectedly murky legacy for the war. Iraq continues to cast a shadow over the lives of Americans, influencing politics, the economy and foreign relations to a degree few would have predicted 12 months ago.
War isn't cheap. But the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom has stunned congressional leaders. Almost a year after the war began on March 19, 2003, and 10 months after the end of major combat operations, the United States is spending an estimated $1 billion a week in Iraq.
That money is adding to record budget deficits. The war has had a negligible impact on the pocketbooks of Americans so far, says Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State University. But the cost has contributed to the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar in relation to foreign currency. In simplest terms, your family trip to London ? or even London, Ontario ? will cost a few bucks more because of the Iraq war.
As pressure builds to reduce those deficits, funding for state and local services may be cut, says David Bonior, professor of labor studies at Wayne State University and former Democratic U.S. congressman.
Peter Brookes of the conservative Heritage Foundation argues the price tag for Iraq will pay dividends in the years to come.
"There's no doubt that war is expensive," Brookes says. "But it's important to plant the seeds of democracy in the Middle East.
"If you look at places that are incredibly repressive, you have terrorism problems," he says. The war "is a down payment on security in the future."
The "no-nonsense policy of the Bush administration" in Iraq has helped U.S. relations with other troublesome regimes, Brookes says. Libya is reaching out to the United States. Iran has agreed to surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Americans overwhelmingly agreed a year ago that the country had to go to war against Iraq. Last spring, 70 percent of Americans believed the war was worth the cost; today, 52 percent believe that, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
As coffins continue to come home, support for the war, and the man who bills himself as a "war president," have declined. Approval for the way Bush has handled Iraq dropped to 46 percent today from 75 percent during the war .
A poll of likely voters conducted in September found Bush's approval rating among relatives of military personnel was 36 percent.
In the aftermath of September 11 and the war in Afghanistan, "the country was emotionally on a war-time footing," says John Pike, director of Global Security, a Washington, D.C., think tank focusing on military issues. "But the national mood now is different. The sense of clear and present danger that we experienced in the year or two post-September 11 is gone."
That feeling is compounded by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Assurances that Saddam had such weapons and could in the near future use them against America was a prime argument for attacking Iraq.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction has hurt Bush's credibility at home and U.S. credibility abroad.
"The war ... has lessened the trust in the government, similar to how the trust was eroded during the Vietnam War," Bonior says. "The credibility of the president has been eroded. That causes a cumulative national anxiety."
Abroad, nations that were skeptical of the U.S. argument for attacking Iraq a year ago will be less likely to believe the U.S. during the next crisis.
"America has no credibility internationally because of what happened in Iraq," says Michael Ripp, an assistant professor of security studies at James Madison College. "Nobody is going to believe us next time."
An example of that can be seen with North Korea, where China has questioned whether U.S. intelligence on North Korea's nuclear program is correct. "If we got the Iraqi program so wrong, how do we really know about North Korea?" Ripp says.
Along with credibility, the popularity of the United States has plummeted. In a 2003 Pew Research Center global survey, the percentage of people who held a favorable or somewhat favorable view of America dropped in all 20 nations surveyed.
In Indonesia, those who say they like America sank to 15 percent in 2003 from 61 percent in 2002; Germany, to 45 percent from 61 percent; Russia, to 36 percent from 61 percent.
Even in Great Britain, the United States' closest ally and a coalition partner in Iraq, America's popularity has dropped to 70 percent today from 83 percent two years ago.
Americans' views of the rest of the world also have dropped.
It's not just a popularity contest, Bonior says. How America is viewed by the rest of the world can affect international trade negotiations and the clout the United States has at the United Nations, he says.
"You can't buy credibility," Ripp says. "Most Americans have no idea of the poisonous feeling in the Muslim world against the U.S. The world has changed dramatically against us."
The war also called into question the Bush administration's doctrine of pre-emption ? attacking a nation that has the potential and willingness to attack America.
Throughout the Cold War, America followed a military doctrine of containment or deterrence, believing the nation's ability to strike back with hundreds of nuclear missiles would stop any aggressor.
That changed September 11.
"Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies," Bush said in the lead-up to the war. "We must take the battle to the enemy."
The doctrine of pre-emption was considered a necessary reaction to September 11. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Bush said. America had to eliminate them before Hussein could use them against us.
The argument made sense, until no weapons of mass destruction were found.
Former top U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said in a television interview that the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had discredited the doctrine, a key element of Bush's national security policy.
"If you cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is credible to the American people and to others abroad, you certainly can't have a policy of preemption," Kay said.
"The removal of Hussein was a blessing for Iraq, the U.S., and the world more generally," Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, wrote in a recent article. "But thanks to the WMD screw-up ... the Iraq mission is also likely to be the first and last example of preemption in action."
That may be a mistake in today's world.
"It's definitely raised the bar for blowing someone up," Pike says. "(But) we may now be setting the standard of proof above what is humanly achievable. However bad the intelligence was in Iraq ... the president shouldn't become gun-shy."
It's a dangerous world out there, with no easy answers.
"All our choices are really bad," Pike says. "Leadership is what happens when all your choices are bad. And we've got some real opportunities for leadership here."
