Foreign Policy has its new issue up online (limited for those w/o subscriptions) of the 10 winners of the US occupation of Iraq. The list includes states, people, NGOs, and other 'entities.' The list goes as follows with links if the essay is open to the public:
- Iran
2-10 and the booby prize under the crease....
- Moqtada al-Sadr (who office has been -- claimed to have been -- attacked by US and Iraqi forces)
- al Qaeda (Duhhh)
- "mad man" Samuel Huntington
- China
- Arab Dictators (Duhh, goes hand in hand with #7)
- The price of oil
- The UN
- Old Europe (an early Rumsfeld blunder)
- Israel
So out of that we get 2: Israel, and we helped the Arab dictators which are our closest allies in the region. This war should be the the new definition of a foreign policy disaster.
FP doesn't say it so bluntly but it points out that the ultimate price to one of the -- in my honest opinion -- biggest loser -- behind only the Iraqi people perhaps -- is the US tax payer.
The White House estimated that the Iraq war would cost $50 billion. Today, it’s closing in on 10 times that amount. And those are just the costs we know about.
On a somewhat related note, the BBC is anticipating the UKs timetable for withdrawal from Iraq as early as Wed (21 February 2007).