Casualties and costs of the Iraq war
Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Not too high for U.S. imperialism

The casualties and costs of the Iraq war are astounding. Here is a brief look at the most recent figures.

According to the medical journal the Lancet, between 425,000 and 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of invasion and

occupation. The number of Iraqis wounded, injured and ill is unknown.

In addition, over 150,000 Iraqi civilians died in the 1991 U.S. war on Iraq. And more than 1.5 million Iraqis died as a result of 13 years of U.N.-mandated sanctions. At least 500,000 of the dead were children under the age of five.

This means that imperialism has killed more than 2 million Iraqis in the last 15 years.

Iraq is a country of 27 million people. To put the number of Iraqi deaths under occupation in perspective: an equal percentage of the U.S. population would be 7.5 million people.

As of Oct. 26, 2,820 U.S. occupying troops have been killed in Iraq. Well over 20,887 additional soldiers have been wounded, along with 17,835 evacuated due to serious injury or illness as of Sept. 30, 2005, when the Pentagon stopped releasing these statistics.

Casualties, as counted by the U.S. military, are the number of dead and wounded soldiers combined, including those evacuated due to injury or illness. If the average monthly number of casualties during the war’s initial 31 months—575 per month—has continued since the Pentagon stopped releasing the statistics, there would be an additional 7,479 U.S. casualties. The total number of U.S. casualties could be 49,000 or higher, a figure never mentioned in the capitalist media.

Costs of war

Iraq today is a colonized country. Iraq’s national economy has been largely destroyed and its society torn to pieces due to the invasion and occupation. The estimated decline in Iraq’s national income has been more than 40 percent since the U.S. invasion in March 2003. This is measured from already depressed levels due to sanctions.

Last month, electricity in Baghdad was on for an average of 2.4 hours per day, lower than in even the worst years of the sanctions.

The Iraq war has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $379 billion so far. The rate of spending is increasing rapidly. The cost comes out to about $2.1 billion each week, $12.5 each hour, $208,333 per minute and $3,472 per second.

While government officials claim there are no additional funds for health care, housing or education, there is never any question about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on war. The latest Iraq war spending bill passed the Senate last month by a vote of 100-0.

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