US recession fruit of waging wars

Major General Yahya Rahim-Safavi said Sunday that the US economy has borne the burden of Washington's chronicle of wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz revealed that the Iraq war cost Washington 50-60 times more than what the Bush administration had predicted in 2003 and was a main cause of the subprime banking crisis gripping the world economy.

"The spending on Iraq was a hidden cause of the current credit crunch because the US central bank responded to the massive financial drain of the war by flooding the American economy with cheap credit," said the former World Bank vice-president on Saturday.

"The regulators were looking the other way and money was being lent to anybody this side of a life-support system," he added.

Safavi said that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had full support from the US, the Soviet Union and Europe during the Iraqi imposed war (1980-88) against Iran.

"Now, Saddam has been executed, the Soviet Union has collapsed and the United States and its European allies are still stuck in the debacle of Iraq," he added.

The Iranian military commander said that today Iran is recognized -even by Washington- as a leading power in the Middle East.