The former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the former CIA director George Tenet, President Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove and many others all “lost” their jobs because of Iraq. With such a cast of high-profile casualties, as well as consistent poll results showing that the majority of Americans feel that the war has been handled badly and want their country to withdraw militarily from Iraq, you would expect it to be a huge and divisive issue in such a closely fought contest.

Members of the House Banking Committee should also be held accountable for what has been categorized as the worse financial collapse and bailout in this country.  The candidates should be fighting front and center addressing the fact that this war has put us in $1 trillion worth of debt, with no end in sight.  Yet, they are haggling over “transparency” issues when it comes to giving billions to banks.  Right now the war is costing the average family $4,681 per household and $1,721 per person, with a total daily cost to the taxpayer of $341.4 million. (Calculating what it cost me personally with my family income totals $44,252 since 2003.)

Paulson’s bailout plan would require Congress to raise the U.S. debt limit to $11.3 trillion. Don’t forget it was just in July when the debt limit was raised by $800 billion to $10.6 billion as a result of the Housing Bill. On that basis, the cost of the bailouts thus far is $1.5 trillion - and counting, which boils down to approximately $6,000 per average household. 

So if the average middle class household is paying an extra $6,000 plus $4,681 yearly, that is an extra $10,681 per household per year, on top of struggling to survive on lower wages, higher food and gas prices.  No wonder people are losing their homes!

Back to the war, however, which has been mentioned by the candidates and the media, but only in passing. They put this down to the success of the so-called "surge", a euphemism for the US troop increase parroted by everyone. The roughly 30,000 extra troops demanded by General David Petraeus, the overall US forces commander in Iraq, recently replaced after a promotion to leader of CENTCOM (Central Command in Control of the Middle East), by General Odierno, have been deployed in much greater numbers in the areas around Baghdad, which have witnessed the most violence between Iraqi groups as well as attacks on US troops. There is no doubt that clashes, particularly across the sectarian divide of Sunni and Shia, have dropped, and this has tentatively encouraged Iraqis in some districts in the heart of the city to venture out into their neighborhoods in ways that they haven't done for a long time.  

British and American politicians have been quick to portray the situation in Iraq as an across-the-board reduction in violence, and link this directly to the surge. This argument has been widely accepted. Yet troop levels in Iraq have been much higher in the past than they are now, with no effect whatsoever on the numbers of attacks, bombings and deaths. So why has it worked this time? 

The reality is that the surge is not what has led to the lower levels of violence, and attacks on US troops are still causing considerable casualties. What has had a far greater impact has been the decision by the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to call a ceasefire between his Mahdi army, a force of up to 100,000, and US troops and Iraqi government security units. Although US commanders on the ground ascribe almost every attack on Iraqis and their troops to al-Qaeda-linked groups, this is mainly for political reasons - to support President Bush's notion that Iraq is the central battleground in the fight against the terrorists. The other factor in the ceasefire decision has been the payment of upwards of $300 a week by the US government to various local militia so that the unrest and unhappiness of the Iraqis is somewhat quelled. 

Let’s look at the statistics.  Just last week the Department of Defense (DoD) confirmed 13 military deaths.  What you don’t hear or see in the media is that for that week, every day there was a roadside bomb that exploded, mostly killing Iraqi civilians, and Iraqi police, all who are either with US forces or are backing their presence.  Also as reported by the DoD, the American death toll as it stands today is 4,174 military members wounded in action which does not include the statistics of those who died of combat related injuries after taken out of the war zone, with over 40,000 wounded in action.  

What is undeniable is that the Mahdi army is far more powerful militarily than groups linked to al-Qaeda, and it has been behind far more attacks. Unlike the dozens of Sunni-based insurgency groups, a number of which work with and are allied to al-Qaeda-linked groups, the Mahdi army is a proper standing military force and, as US commanders will tell you off the record, its soldiers in effect control at least half of Baghdad. What's more, the Mahdi army is openly visible around the city. When you visit predominantly Shia districts of Baghdad, such as al-Khadimiya, the Mahdi army's offices, flags, posters and patrols are everywhere to be seen. Moqtada al-Sadr called the ceasefire because the Mahdi army badly needed to reflect the political force his movement had in the Iraqi parliament (it holds a large number of seats.  

On the streets of Baghdad, the army had been seen not as a political movement, but as a group of criminal gangs posing as a sectarian militia defending their community against attacks by Sunnis.  But many of Sadr's commanders, a number of whom have been arrested as a result of their decision to call a ceasefire, are urging him not to renew it for another six-month term. The pressure on him to take up arms again is intense. Shia residents of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad are now more easily targeted by Sunni groups eager to drive them out. They want local Mahdi army fighters to come to their aid and carry out revenge attacks again. If Sadr succumbs to this pressure from his grass-roots supporters - the huge numbers of working-class and impoverished Shia communities not just in Baghdad, but throughout Iraq - the lull in the violence will end almost overnight. No boosting of troop levels or boosting of the surge will have any effect. 

Last year, the Government Accountability Office also said that “there might be fewer attacks because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, particularly in the Baghdad area.” Similarly, in April, CNN reported that if “anyone is telling you that the cleansing of Baghdad has not contributed to the fall in violence, then they either simply do not understand Baghdad or they are lying to you."  

Perhaps the greatest success of the surge has been in the way it was sold politically, and thus has become almost unquestioningly accepted as a panacea for the violence in Iraq. Petraeus' performance in front of the congressional armed services committee last September gave the impression that the surge was a new beginning for US policy in Iraq. The luck was that it coincided with the Mahdi army ceasefire. Without that, however, the "success" will evaporate, and Iraq will come back on to the US presidential election agenda with a vengeance. Looking at these facts one would think that the press or public would call the candidates out on the real facts on why they keep saying the “surge is working.” 

What was particularly disturbing in the 90 minutes of the Presidential debate last Friday night was that as McCain kept referring to Bush’s amazing “strategical” move to increase troops which worked so well in the overall winning of the “war in Iraq”, Obama did not call him on it.  He did not say what was said here, that we were paying them off to stay quiet, and that although the death toll was not as high as in previous years since the surge began, a total of 1,234 members of the US military were killed and an untold number were wounded.   

How is that winning?  And what about the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians who have and still are being blown apart by our occupation there?  The number of Iraqis killed in the conflict far surpasses the toll on US troops. Over 8,000 Iraqi security personnel have died in the conflict, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institute. Civilian deaths have been far higher, though counts vary. Some put the conservative estimate of Iraqi fatalities at 500,000, or more.  Since the surge it is reported that 21,137 Iraqis, including members of the Iraqi police force, have been killed. (These statistics are generated by the DoD.) 

People in this country better wake up to the fact that there is still a major war going on, and plans to escalate it into other areas in the region by both Presidential candidates are in plain sight.  That $700 billion is added chump change compared to the mounting spending and debt the continuation of wars will bring to the backs of the people.  Once those in the working class who are being taxed to support out of control greed and spending put forth by the government, and are overburdened and broken, then you will see a real depression, none like that of a simple market crash.