By Sarmad Qazi
THE US-led war against Iraq has turned out to be the costliest war in the history of America, Ibrahim Oweiss, Professor of Economics at the Georgetown University-Qatar, said yesterday.
Giving a lecture on the economic cost of the war in Iraq on the US economy, to the students of the Academic Bridge Programme (ABP) at the Georgetown University-Qatar in Education City, he said:
“While the current administration in Washington tries very hard to keep the cameras away from the bodies of the soldiers coming home, people need to know the human, economic, political and monetary cost of the US war in Iraq.”
Prof Oweiss has advised several governments and multinational corporations in the US and abroad.
According to him, since 2003, 4,000 US soldiers and 1,200 members of Allied Forces have been killed in Iraq, while 60,000 US soldiers have been wounded with an additional 17,000 injured for the Allied Forces. The death toll is 800,000 for Iraqis.
“Close to 4.1mn Iraqis have become refugees, while the rate of casualties has risen, with the ‘surge’ of 34,000 US soldiers, last spring,” said Prof Oweiss, who was also a visiting professor of economics at Harvard University.
“In 2003, the US was spending $93,000 per minute on the war in Iraq, which is $1mn every 10 minutes. That has gone up to more than $317,000 every minute in 2008, resulting in a loss of $1mn every three minutes,” he said.
The chief economist of the World Bank has recently remarked that the war in Iraq has cost the US up to $1tn.
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