New 'Costs of War' Report: Hundreds of Thousands Dead, Trillions Spent

[midnight]

As the ten year anniversary of the US invasion approaches, updated research shows that both the human and financial costs of the preemptive and prolonged military adventure in Iraq are higher than the most Americans even now realize and astronomically higher than its proponents assured the public as they made their case for war a decade ago.

At minimum, according to the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, 134,000 innocent Iraqis lost their lives as a direct result of the US-led war that began in March of 2003. For numerous reasons, the groups says, this number could well "double" before a complete count is reached.

"The figures for the number of Iraqi civilians killed have been clouded somewhat by arguments about methods for counting the dead and by politics inside Iraq and in the US," the authors of the report note. "Yet to focus on the arguments about how to record the dead and wounded obscures the human toll of the war. What can be said, after reviewing the evidence, is that the conservative 123,000 estimate for civilians killed by direct war-related violence is low, perhaps very low. On the higher end, a 2006 study published by The Lancet estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war."

Estimating the total deaths—though equally hard to calculate given the nature of war and the poor reporting by the US military—the study put the conservative number between 176,000 and 189,000. That includes security forces, insurgents, journalists and humanitarian workers.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/15


The cost of this war has been unfairly born by the 99%.... I think the question we need to be asking, is it time to make those who started it-pay for this deficit?

[4dsc]

1. And republicans complain about paying taxes.

Here is another fine example of why republicans cannot be trusted with the presidency.

[midnight]

2. We left them with a surplus too... Talk about a wrecking crew....

[undeterred]

3. And George the warmonger is enjoying his retirement on the ranch

taking painting lessons.

[midnight]

5. I was a bit surprised to see he was interested in the arts...

[indepat]

4. Hundreds of thousands dead, trillions of dollar spent on the Iraqi War, tens of

millions of our citizens about to have their already-paid-for earned social security and Medicare benefits cut, ostensibly to pay for this killing, carnage, and destruction. What is wrong with this picture, this depiction of the government of the people, by the people, and for the people in action, the government having a mandate imo to promote the general welfare?