The New Nation - Internet Edition

FORMER chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, the other day slammed the

Iraq war as a 'tragedy - for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity' and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts. Writing in The Guardian of London on the five-year anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the war, said that responsibility for the war 'must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago.' As head of UN monitoring and inspection commission, Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's alleged 'weapons of mass destruction - traces of which have never been found.

On the other hand, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J Bilmes, have stated in a new book that in 2008 - its sixth year, the Iraq war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, a triple the 'burn' rate of its earliest years. Interest on money borrowed to pay those costs could alone add $ 816 billion to that bottom line, according to the book 'The Three Trillion Dollar War' written by Stiglitz of Columbia University and Bilmes of Harvard University. The two wars will have cost the US budget $ 845 billion in 2007.

Although American military and Iraqi civilian casualties have declined in recent months, the rate of spending has shot up. A fully funded 2008 war budget will be 155 per cent higher than 2004's as reported while new analyses show - 'the flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising.' Almost $ 17 billion is appropriated this year for advanced armoured vehicles to protect troops against roadside bombs.