Iraq War

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as the nation went to war, seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and expand its ranks. Those decisions and the protracted nation-building efforts launched in both countries will...

C lare Boothe Luce liked to say that "a great man is one sentence. " Presidents, in particular. The most common "one sentence" for George W. Bush is: "He kept us safe. " Not quite right. With Bush's legacy being reassessed as his presidential library opens in Dallas, it's important to note that he did not just keep us safe. He created the entire anti-terror infrastructure that continues to keep us safe. That homage was paid, wordlessly, by Barack Obama, who vilified Bush's anti-terror policies as a candidate, then continued them as president:...

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war. " McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers...

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly quoted Karl Rove. He said the former president believed he owed President Obama a "decent" interval of silence, not a "deep" interval. This version has been corrected. George W. Bush will return to the spotlight this week for the dedication of his presidential library , an event likely to trigger fresh public debate about his eight fateful years in office. But he reemerges with a better public image than...

Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a retired Army officer. An updated edition of his book "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War" will be published this month. Judgments rendered by history tend to be tentative, incomplete and reversible. More than occasionally, they arrive seasoned with irony. This is especially true when it comes to war, where battlefield outcomes thought to be conclusive often prove anything but. Rather than...

Total number of U.S. military deaths and names of the U.S. troops killed recently in the Iraq war, as announced by the Pentagon: 4,274 Fatalities In hostile actions: 3,431 In non-hostile actions: 843 Tallies may be incomplete because of lags in reporting. Sgt. Edward W. Forrest Jr., 25, of St. Louis. Pvt. Bryce E. Gautier, 22, of Cypress, Calif. Staff Sgt. Bryan E. Hall, 32, of Elk Grove, Calif.

He followed his father, a veteran of Vietnam, into the Army, and spent a year fighting in Iraq. Arlester Jay returned home addicted to drugs and alcohol, his father said, and he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was homeless for a time, unable to hold even a menial job. D.C. police pulled Jay's body from the Anacostia River on Monday after a rower spotted it floating near the Langston Golf Course in Northeast. The discovery ended a nearly four-week search after Jay's family reported him missing in early...

The 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has prompted plenty of analysis of the mistakes made there, along with a few tendentious claims that "the same people" who supported war in Iraq are now pressing for U.S. intervention in Syria. I'm one of those people. So, to paraphrase the polemicists : Did I learn nothing from the last decade? Do I want to repeat the Iraq "fiasco"? Let's start with the second question. Iraq was unquestionably costly and painful to the United States — in dollars, in political comity...

The U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will cost taxpayers $4 trillion to $6 trillion, taking into account the medical care of wounded veterans and expensive repairs to a force depleted by more than a decade of fighting, according to a new study by a Harvard researcher. Washington increased military benefits in late 2001 as the nation went to war, seeking to quickly bolster its talent pool and expand its ranks. Those decisions and the protracted nation-building efforts launched in...

Paul Farhi [" Did the media blow it on Iraq? ," Outlook, March 24] let the press — and his own paper — off too easily about the invasion of Iraq. For one thing, while he cited news stories, Mr. Farhi ignorededitorial pages — notably that of The Post, which supported the invasion. And he blinked at what many people then recognized: Even if Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction, it was doubtful that he posed a threat outside his own country. Having bloodied his nose with his invasion of Kuwait,...

Will Cole served with the Marines from 2001 to 2007. He is a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he co-founded the student veterans association. Ten years ago this week , the Iraq war started . I remember picking up our light-armored vehicles from Port Doha in Kuwait as the war kicked off. Our company of Marines unloaded the "pigs" — as we called them — and packed them up as fast as possible so we could catch up to our command unit, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.

"Fundamentally, we have no idea what is needed unless and until we get there on the ground. " That was then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz three weeks before the Iraq war began a decade ago. He was digressing from his script on what he thought would be positive results from a military action while appearing before the House Budget Committee on Feb. 27, 2003. Do nations learn from mistakes? Today the United States is in deep debt, in part from the Iraq war, the continued fighting in Afghanistan and the...

This week's 10th anniversary of the Iraq war passed quietly, and that's not a bad thing. Most Americans have no wish to celebrate the war, fought under false pretenses to a costly and ambiguous end. But in Washington this week there are welcome signs that the lessons of Iraq have finally sunk in, among Republicans as well as Democrats. The mistakes of wars past were on the minds and tongues of the subdued members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday as they questioned administration witnesses.

Washington is going through a long stretch of anniversaries and commemorations, not all well-known, but each connected to the city in its own way, from Pi Day this past Thursday to the start of spring on March 20. Thursday was Pi Day because its date, 3/14, suggests the value of pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, especially meaningful in a city of so many circles. Friday was March 15, which once was federal income tax day. Saturday's date, March 16, is the birthday of President James Madison.