Iraq by the Numbers

By Eli Clifton, ThinkProgress

22 October 11

The world's costliest cakewalk.

he Obama administration's announcement of a withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq by the end of the year offers the possibility of a definitive conclusion for the US military's involvement in Iraq. But while the return of all US 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 US military fatalities

30,182 US 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 US expenditures lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001

0 weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq