Deadly U.S. costs of the Iraq war

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2006 Editions - Oct. 14, 2006


 

As a new study finds that 600,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. invasion (see editorial, page 12), Americans contemplate the bitter costs here at home:

• More than 2,700 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

• So far, nearly 20,500 U.S. soldiers have been wounded in combat in Iraq. Only about half have returned to duty, meaning the others were too severely injured to go back. 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq last month, the highest monthly level since 2004. In the first week of October, nearly 300 were wounded.

• The cost to U.S. taxpayers, through next March, now totals $378 billion. Before the war began, Bush administration officials projected that the cost would be only $50 billion.

• Health care costs and disability benefits for the wounded soldiers may exceed $100 billion.

• Low- and middle-income neighborhoods (those with median incomes between $30,000 and $59,999) are over-represented in the ranks of military recruits, compared with their share of the overall U.S. population. Wealthier neighborhoods are under-represented. The gap widened last year — the share of recruits from low- and middle-income neighborhoods increased, while the share of recruits from upper-middle and high-income neighborhoods decreased.

Here are numbers for some Senate battleground states:

• New Jersey: cost to taxpayers $17.3 billion, 46 soldiers killed, 316 wounded in combat

• Pennsylvania: cost $14.4 billion, 128 killed, 945 wounded

• Ohio: cost $13.3 billion, 123 killed, 868 wounded

• Virginia: cost $10.2 billion, 80 killed, 484 wounded

• Michigan: cost $10 billion, 96 killed, 588 wounded

• Connecticut: cost $9.2 billion, 22 killed, 171 wounded

• Minnesota: cost $9.1 billion, 39 soldiers killed, 330 wounded

• Washington: cost $8.6 billion, 53 killed, 598 wounded

• Maryland: cost $7.3 billion, 51 killed, 273 wounded

• Missouri: cost $5.8 billion, 47 killed, 471 wounded

• Arizona: cost $5.2 billion, 63 killed, 427 wounded

• Montana: cost $579 million, 11 killed, 156 wounded



Sources: Washington Post, National Priorities Project