“Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” - President Bush, 5/1/03

“It’s clear that the end is very much in sight. And, today I think Americans should be very proud of their leadership.” – John McCain, 4/9/03

Five years after George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, John McCain and other conservatives promised a swift and easy victory 150,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq. Iraqi politicians have made little progress on developing the government structure that the Bush Administration promised would take only a matter of months to create. Since the war began, almost 4,000 American troops have been killed. The cost to the American economy has reached $1.3 trillion ($16,500 per family of four) and in the end will likely rise to $3 trillion ($35,000 per family of four). Civilian casualties are in the hundreds of thousands and four million Iraqi people have been forced from their homes. The Iraqi economy is stagnant with oil production and electricity at prewar levels. Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues to suffer under the strain of repeated deployments.

“I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.” – John McCain, 9/29/02

“The idea that it's going to be a long, long, long battle of some kind I think is belied by the fact of what happened in 1990. Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that . . . It won't be a World War III.” - Donald Rumsfeld, 11/15/02

“It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.” - Paul Wolfowitz, 3/27/03

America has been in Iraq longer than it was in World War II. It has been 60 months since military operations in Iraq began. As of March 19, 2008 American troops have been in Iraq for 1,827 days, 261 weeks.

Five years in, American troop levels in Iraq are where they were when Bush declared “mission accomplished.” There were 150,000 American troops in Iraq in April 2003. Today there are 155,000 troops in Iraq. [Brookings Institution, 3/10/08 ]

Costs are Rising

“Well, the Office of Management and Budget has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost.” - Donald Rumsfeld, 1/19/03

The direct cost of the war in Iraq is more than 10 times what the Bush Administration said it would be. Roughly $525 billion have been allocated to fight the war in Iraq, with no end in sight. Once the fiscal year 2008 funding process is complete, the cost will go above $600 billion. [Brookings Institution, 3/10/08 ]

Even the White House’s most realistic analysis was far lower than the actual costs of the war. White House Economic Adviser Lawrence Lindsay’s aggressive pre-war estimate stated that the war would cost $100 billion to $200 billion. He was asked to resign. [MSNBC, 3/17/06 ]

The war has cost the overall economy $1.3 trillion ($16,500 per family of four) thus far and Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates that it could rise to $3 trillion ($35,000 per family of four). Conventional estimates of the cost of the war ignore the value of losses in military readiness, increased recruitment costs, the cost of medical treatment for returning veterans and other impacts on the economy. [Congressional Joint Economic Committee, 2/28/2008 ]

Violence Continues Unabated

“The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” - Vice President Cheney, 06/05

“Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.” - John McCain, 12/05

Last year was the deadliest yet for American troops in Iraq. 901 Americans were killed in Iraq in 2007 the highest of any year of the war. [Iraq Coalition Casualty Count ]

While violence has dropped from its late 2006 peak, the 2008 level is still unacceptable. According to the Department of Defense, attacks have returned to mid 2005 levels of roughly 500 attacks per week and stayed steady for the past few months. While this is an improvement over the full scale civil war of 2006 and 2007, it is still equivalent to the level of the violent and unacceptable insurgency that was occurring in 2005. [DOD, 3/7/08 ].

Civilian casualties are in the hundreds of thousands with WHO estimating 150,000 deaths in the first forty months of the war. The World Health Organization estimates that between 100-200 thousand Iraqis were killed in the first 40 months of the war. That does not even include the peak of violence in late 2006 and early 2007. [Financial Times, 1/10/2008 ]

4 Million Iraqis have been forced from their homes. 2 million have fled the country. 2 million are displaced inside of Iraq. [BBC, 4/17/07 ]

Little Progress on Politics & Reconstruction

“The bulk of the funds for Iraq's reconstruction will come from Iraqis” – Donald Rumsfeld, 10/03

Little to no progress has been made on the Administration’s own political benchmarks. The recently passed de-Baathification bill may actually make things worse. A bill organizing provincial elections was vetoed. No movement has taken place on drafting a plan for national reconciliation, amending the constitution, or reaching an agreement on sharing oil revenue. [Center for American Progress, 1/24/08 ]

Five years later, oil production has never exceeded prewar levels. Despite the assertion that Iraqi oil production would pay for the war, production is at 2.46 million barrels/day compared to 2.5 before the war. [Brookings Institution, 3/10/08 ]

Baghdad is getting only 9.7 hours of electricity per day – a fraction of what it was getting before the war. Without a steady supply of power businesses have suffered. The original goal was to increase nationwide electrical output to 6,000 megawatts per day by mid-2004. Instead electricity is currently at 4,310. [Brookings Institution, 3/10/08 ]

"As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. Not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." – Donald Rumsfeld, 12/04/04

“I Don’t Think Americans Are Concerned If We’re There For 100 Years Or 1,000 Years Or 10,000 Years.” – John Mccain, 1/6/08

Army Chief of Staff: Iraq is hurting the Army’s ability to sustain itself and plan for future incidents around the world. Gen. George Casey stated that “The cumulative effects of the last six-plus years at war have left our Army out of balance, consumed by the current fight and unable to do the things we know we need to do to properly sustain our all-volunteer force and restore our flexibility for an uncertain future.” [Reuters, 2/26/08 ]

A survey of military officers found that 88% thought that war had stretched the military dangerously thin. 60% think that the U.S. military is weaker then it was five years ago. [Center for New American Security, 2/08 ]

The U.S. military is overstretched, understaffed and under-equipped. “It will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a “death spiral,” in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.” “The combat readiness of the total Army (active units, the National Guard, and the Army Reserve) is in tatters... The simple fact is that the United States currently does not have enough troops who are ready and available for potential contingency missions in places like Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, or anywhere else…” [Lawrence Korb, Testimony Before House Armed Services Committee, 7/27/07 . Washington Post, 3/19/07 ]