Gray, Alan

Alan Gray

Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, 'The Three Trillion Dollar War'; Geoff Simons, 'Iraq Endgame?'; Greg Palast, 'Armed Madhouse'

13 August 2011Review Alan Gray

Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The Real Cost of the Iraq Conflict (Allen Lane, 2008; ISBN 978-1846141287; 336pp; £20); Geoff Simons, Iraq Endgame? Surge, suffering and the politics of denial (Politicos Publishing, 2008; ISBN 978-1-84275-221-0; pp464; £14.99); Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse: Undercover Dispatches from a Dying Regime (Penguin Books, 2007; ISBN 978-0-141-01827-0; pp432; £8.99)

The Three Trillion Dollar War is exhaustive analysis of the true cost of the war in Iraq. The headline figure – $3 trillion – is an unthinkable amount of money. Half of it, for example, would cover the cost of the United Nation’s eight Millennium Development Goals – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015.

But, Stiglitz and Bilmes point out, $3 trillion is a conservative estimate of the cost of the…

Government winning public support for Afghan war

1 April 2008News Alan Gray

British public support for the war on Afghanistan has risen over the past two years, as Afghan political leaders call for negotiations with the Taliban.

In an ICM/BBC poll of 1,002 adults taken on 12-13 March, 40% of Britons expressed support for military operations in Afghanistan. This figure was up 9% from 31% in a September 2006 poll. However, opposition still outnumbers support though it is down from 53% to 48%.
Interestingly, most of the increase in support came from the…