Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Costs of War project released a report yesterday which estimates that it has cost more than 550,000 lives, and nearly $1.8 trillion, reported Defense News. “The Bush administration was convinced and assured the American people and the world that the war would have few casualties of all kinds—civilian and military—and would lead to quick victory,” instead of stretching for years, said Neta C. Crawford, the project’s co-director, in a statement on the ongoing research effort from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
The dollar amount from Costs of War includes $862 billion in overseas contingency funds—budgeted by Congress to fund the Global War on Terror after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington—as well as $406 billion added to the Pentagon’s base budget between 2003 and 2023. The researchers added another $62 billion from the State Department, interest on the overseas contingency spending, plus $233 billion for troops’ medical and disability care and another $1.1 trillion for future veterans’ care through 2050.
But this is an exercise in accounting. It can’t possibly capture the enormity of the crimes stemming from going to war on the basis of a big, fat lie—as expressed in Donald Rumsfeld’s famous claim that we would see a mushroom cloud somewhere if we didn’t invade Iraq. Joe Plenzler, a retired Marine officer who served on the staff of the 1st Marine Division, then commanded by James Mattis, for the invasion, notes in a commentary published by Military.com, the famous aphorism that in war, truth is the first casualty.
