Iraq

On March 19, 2003 the United States,along with Great Britain, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq with the purpose of overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein. The reason that the Bush administration gave to the US citizens and Colin Powell gave to the United Nations was that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to use them. Over a 21 day period, troops from these countries marched toward Baghdad and subsequently arrested Saddam Hussein. In 2005, the Central Intellegence Agency (CIA) released a report saying that no weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

On May 1, 2003 President George Bush announced that the mission had been accomplished and that major combat operations had ended. This was an ill-advised declaration because, as of June 2011, major combat operations continue in Iraq.

The financial cost of the war in Iraq is estimated by the National Priorities Project to be $787,136,411,937 and climbing.

While the financial cost of the Iraq war and occupation is staggering, the cost in human life in the Iraq war is massive. According to www.icasulaties.org, which gets it’s data from the Department of Defense, as of June 2011:

The number of U.S dead in Iraq is 4,472 and counting
The number of coalition dead is 318 and counting
The number of Iraq Security Forces dead is 10,091 and counting
The number of U.S wounded is 32,227 and counting
According to the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project, as od December 2010, the number of civilians killed is between 99,151 and108,234. The IBC was also given access to the Wikileaks disclosures of the Iraq War Logs and has estimated that these documents show the total number of Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion to be over 150,000, with about 80% being civilian.