Five years later

Today marks the five year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on March 19th, 2003--an invasion based on the premise that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a premise which turned out to be false.

This blog is participating in a blogswarm against the war. See who else is participating here

Costs of the War include

• At least 4000 U.S. soldiers' lives lost
• Over a million Iraqi lives lost (how's that for proportionality)
  
• A final dollar cost to the U.S. of 3 Trillion dollars
• Oil has hit $111/barrel
• U.S. soldiers have participated in, even led, war crimes and atrocities
• Not to mention Abu Ghraib, an event which has mostly been forgotten by the U.S. populace, but which continues to receive regular media attention in the Muslim world
  
• 16% of U.S. soldiers who have served in Iraq are returning from the devastating psychological illness called Combat Related PTSD, more than the 15% rate from the Vietnam War. Although it's hard to get a handle on how many total soldiers have served in Iraq, the number is probably over a million, which means at least 160,000 soldiers suffering from PTSD
• Here's a devastating statistic: 120 Iraq and Vietnam War vets are committing suicide *every week*!
  
• World opinion of the U.S. has gone down and down

Pro's of the war include:

... well ... Bush says it's all been worth it, somehow