Winner: Osama Bin Laden and Military Enterprises. Losers: Bush and the Iraqi People

The United States attack on Iraq, made Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner.

In all wars, there are winners and losers. The Iraq war is no exception. Iraqi civilians and US-British soldiers, who have been killed, are certainly not winners. President, George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the war, are not winners either. The British media concluded that the big winners of this war are 1) US-British military weapon suppliers and contractors, 2) Iran, and 3) Al-Qaida, a terrorist organization. Bush and Blair become the losers.

Independent Newspaper, a British media source, is convinced that Iraqi civilians are not winners of this war. With the most conservative estimate, 90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the war since 2003. In addition, 2.5 million Iraqis fled abroad and at least 2 million people were displaced. When Saddam Hussein was still in power, Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, experienced daily blackouts of up to eight hours. Currently, the daily average blackout period far exceed eight hours and Iraqi people complain.

Bush and Blair Damaged Image

The advocates of this war are not winners. Donald Rumsfeld, former secretary of defense, was ousted during Bush’s second term of office. In addition, Paul Wolfowitz, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, was forced to resign as World Bank President after his scandal with Shaha Riza.

Furthermore, the results of the poll revealed that Bush has become the most unpopular president. Bush’s faithful ally, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has also left Downing Street, leaving Bush with one less ally. The United States and the United Kingdom’s international image have been immeasurably damaged because of the war.

At the same time, an unprecedented level of money flows to the pockets of private companies, including those private security companies that provide protection to personnel, infrastructure, and transport military equipment. In addition, corporate consultants, construction project planners and government consultants, take advantage of the US-British reconstruction of Iraq and make a lot of money.

According to a statistical survey in October 2007, the number of private contractors in Iraq total 160,000. They come from 300 different companies and about 50,000 individuals come from companies like “Blackwater”. The number of personal guards is as many as 900, and each cost American taxpayers an average of 445,000 US dollars.

British companies are also active in Iraq. “The King of Mercenaries”, is taking his new company, Aegis Defence Services, to Iraq to make money. The company won a contract of 293 million US dollars from the Pentagon back in 2004 and has expanded since then. Now, the company employs about 1,000 employees in Iraq.

From consulting the economic reconstruction of Iraq, management consulting firm, BearingPoint, received a project worth 240 million US dollars. The company has donated a few hundred thousand dollars to the Republican party, including the two presidential election donations of 117,000 US dollars to George W. Bush.

Last year, the media revealed that one BearingPoint employee, who was sent to the United States Embassy in Baghdad, participated in the drafting of a law that was later approved by Iraq congress in March last year. The law opened the country’s oil reserves to foreign companies for the first time since 1972. This move is considered extremely rare in the Middle East.

The war in Iraq contributed a lot to the current soaring oil prices. When United States held its large scale invasion of Iraq, the market price of crude raised to a, then, seemingly impossible price of 37 US dollars a barrel. At the end of last week, crude oil prices reached a record high of 110 US dollars a barrel.