Iraq

A Long, Strange Trip

Hard to believe it's been so long isn't it?

Eli Clifton of ThinkProgress compiled a quick list of numbers summarizing the 8 years and 215 days since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. They don't paint the entire picture, but it's a start.

8 years, 260 days since Secretary of State Colin Powell presented evidence of Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program

8 years, 215 days since the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq

8 years, 175 days since President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln

4,479 U.S. military fatalities

30,182 U.S. military injuries

468 contractor fatalities

103,142 – 112,708 documented civilian deaths

2.8 million internally displaced Iraqis

$806 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011

$3 – $5 trillion in total economic cost to the United States of the Iraq war according to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes

$60 billion in U.S. expenditures lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001

0 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq

A fairly comprehensive list. I would only add that some human-rights organizations and independent studies have concluded that the combined civilian and insurgent death toll in Iraq since the invasion of 2003 may be as high as 655,000 to 1 million.

It's unlikely we will see a conclusive figure for total number of deaths anytime in the immediate future.

None of these numbers convey the psychological and emotional trauma inflicted on both nations as a result of a war based on lies.

This is the George Bush legacy.