- Archives

In commercial, criminal and civil law, liability for damage done unlawfully, or accidentally, or recklessly, falls on the doer. The Iraq war was not accidental, but was both unlawful and reckless. So far the international media have attempted to estimate the costs of the war as it impinged on the economies of the perpetrator countries, mainly, the US, UK, Australia, Spain, Italy and those others listed as the "collation of the willing". Some of these coalition members, notably Ireland, may even have managed, so far, to make a small profit out of this war. Others such as Spain and Australia, had hoped to cash in on their complicity also, but suffered serious losses from the bombings in Madrid and Bali. The day of reckoning for the Iraq war of 2003 may be many years, even decades from now. Ireland supplied beef to feed the Iraqi army during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. It was never paid for this beef and the Irish Government, on behalf of the "taxpayer", decided to write off well over EUR 100 million of this bill in 2003. Libyan involvement in the bombing of Pan Am flight 106 in 1988 over Lockerbie led to an agreement on compensation in 2003 of about $10 million for each of the 270 victims. The cost of the compensation package for the Iraq war will be many times the Libyan figure. The number of fatal victims has already exceeded 100,000, and the number of injured may be as high as 1,000,000 Iraqis. This is close to the level of casualties caused by the tsunami tidal wave in Asia. If calculated at $10 million per victim, then the compensation or reparations due to the victims in Iraq would amount to 10 million million dollars. [more]