Iraq By The Numbers: The World’s Costliest Cakewalk
By Eli Clifton on Oct 21, 2011 at 5:00 pm
Powell's infamous presentation at the U.N. The Obama administration’s announcement of a withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of the year offers the possibility of a definitive conclusion for the U.S. military’s involvement in Iraq. But while the return of all U.S. service men and women by Christmas is a cause for celebration, the costs of the war are only beginning to be fully understood. The “cakewalk” to Baghdad, as George W. Bush adviser Kenneth Adelman infamously wrote in February, 2002, has been anything but. The Iraq War, and the faulty premise that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, has had a staggering humanitarian and economic cost.
Here are some relevant numbers:
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
Posted by glassman on :
$806 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011
$3 – $5 trillion in total economic cost to the United States of the Iraq war according to economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes
i do not beleive we only spent 806 billion in Federal Funds, i bel;evie it's more than double that, and they hid the numbers.
-for instance-i wonder how much the state dept spent on 'contractors" ?
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
Should have happened sooner.
Posted by glassman on :
when we invaded iraq? oil cost40$ or less per barrel.... there is no doubt in my mind that we would only be paying 40$ per barrel now if we had only invaded Afghanistan, and we'd be done with Afghanistan by now.....
the mistake was one of the biggest in world history...
Iran and Iraq will be close allies soon. Iraq is not likely to reamin a single country for the next decade.
Posted by CashCowMoo on :
Iran would love the price of oil to go through the roof. There are major undiscovered reserves of oil in western Iraq that have not even been begun development.