Mission Impossible
May 1, 2007
Dear Friend,
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| President Bush delivering his "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 |
Exactly four years after standing in front of a banner emblazoned with the slogan “Mission Accomplished” and proudly declaring the end of major combat operations in Iraq, President Bush now stands poised to veto legislation that would bring U.S. troops home.
Tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, it is clear that Mission Accomplished has become Mission Impossible.
A story in numbers shows the devastating toll that the war has had on both the U.S. and Iraq.
Four years ago, there were 150,000 U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. By the end of this month, there will be approximately 160,000 U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq, including 21,500 combat and 7,000 support personnel “surged” since January 2007.
Since his speech four years ago, 3,450 of the 3,622 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq have lost their lives, including 1,859 in the past year. An additional 24,314 U.S. soldiers have been wounded since the war began, and that figure doesn’t even include a substantial number of “non-combat” injuries.
Similar tragedies have befallen Iraqi civilians and trends over the past year indicate intensifying violence. Almost half of the roughly 70,000 total Iraqi civilian deaths occurred between March 2006 and March 2007.
Shortly before the war began, the White House estimated that the Iraq War would cost around $50 billion. If you include the yet-to-be-passed Supplemental Appropriations bill and next year's defense spending request, the U.S. will have spent $564 billion on the Iraq War, over 11 times the original estimate.
Four years ago, the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism reported that the number of international terrorist attacks had decreased 44% and anti-U.S. terrorist attacks decreased 65% from the previous year. This year, they concluded that terrorist attacks in Iraq had increased 91% from 2005 to 2006 and that 65% of global fatalities from terrorism occurred in Iraq during 2005-2006.
These numbers, however, cannot begin to demonstrate the suffering and anguish that both Americans and Iraqis have faced as a consequence of this ill-conceived war.
Council for a Livable World will continue to fight for an end to the disastrous Iraq war in hopes that there won’t be a fifth anniversary.
Your support can help us continue the struggle to end this misguided war.
Sincerely,
John Isaacs and Guy Stevens
