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With the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war approaching on Tuesday, it seems that the price in every respect, the United States is paying for launching the invasion, is ever mounting.

The past four years have witnessed a growing number of US casualties and escalating financial costs, which have made the invasion domestically unpopular and overburdened the country's treasury.

The Bush administration and the Republican Party have also paid a heavy political price for the unpopular war while the country's image on the international stage has suffered major setbacks.

It is worthwhile to note that the war has already overtaken the World War II (WWII) as the longest conflict overseas, the United States has ever been involved in, barring the Vietnam War.

Meanwhile, the cost of the present Iraq war has already surpassed the total amount spent during the Korean War and is quickly catching up with the expenses incurred in the Vietnam War.

In monetary terms, this war is the third most expensive in US history, and eventually, its total economic impact is expected to match that of WWII, the costliest one till date.

Thus arises the inevitable question: How long will the war last and how much will it cost in the end? Given the current situation, there is no clear answer to it.

Bloody milestones

The death toll of US troops grows each day in Iraq and when the figure goes up by a thousand, the media tends to refer to it as a "milestone."

Three such "milestones" have been passed, and there are probably more to come. To date, over 3,200 US troops have been killed and more than 24,000 wounded since the war began 4 years ago.

Among the wounded, over 10,000 are unable to return to duty and one in five suffers permanent disability.

Opponents of the war may have different reasons to oppose the war effort, but nearly everyone agrees that the casualty figures are spiraling too high, according to US analysts.

The American public's increasing skepticism with the Iraq war and their horror over the increasing casualties and the sufferings of the wounded has been described by political scholars as the "Iraq Syndrome." The presidential approval ratings have plummeted quicker than during the Vietnam War years.

For the US military, even the top brass have acknowledged that the war is hurting the military's combat readiness and morale.

In a report dated August 2006, two thirds of the Army and the Marine Corp units said that they were ill-prepared to take on any other missions as the ongoing Iraq war was consuming much of their equipment and energy.

According to Pentagon statistics, 631,000 US combat troops have served in the Iraq war and many of them have served two or three tours of duty already.

The workload has taken its toll on training and preparedness and many soldiers are returning from Iraq with some sort of mental disorder.

Michael Kussman, acting undersecretary for veteran affairs, told the Congress this month that nearly 40,000 Iraq war veterans are showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress, which can very well result in suicides.

Economic impact

The war has so far cost US taxpayers US$ 351 billion and President George W. Bush has requested another US$181 billion for war efforts through 2007 and 2008.

The total cost is estimated at US$532 billion by late 2008, exceeding that of the Vietnam War (accounting inflation) and becoming the second most expensive US involvement after WWII.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the war's ultimate impact on the US economy is concerned.

Aside from the direct war costs, replacing war equipment will cost taxpayers at least another US$60 billion over the next five years.

And even after the last US soldier finally leaves Iraq, the war's costs will continue mounting.

A recent study by Linda Bilmes of Harvard University put the total cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of the Iraq war at US$350 billion to US$700 billion.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at the Columbia University, estimated that the real price of the Iraq war, including war spending, future costs and the related economic impact, is well over US$2 trillion.

Soft power declines

While unpopular at home, the Iraq war is being even more vehemently criticized abroad, and has contributed a lot to the decline of US soft power, according to political experts.

In January, a BBC-sponsored survey in over 20 countries found that the international image of the United States is getting worse, with 51 percent interviewees saying that they have negative views of the country.

Only 30 percent of those surveyed said that they see the United States in a positive light.

Pollsters attributed the phenomenon mostly to the Iraq war and the detainee abuse scandals, which have dogged much of the war effort.

Even in Britain, the closest ally of the United States, 81 percent of the respondents opposed the war.

Richard Eichenberg, an expert of presidential poll ratings, said the impact of the war on the US's image has been "devastating" and the country's standing in the world is "by all measures at its lowest point in history."

Joseph Nye, a leading professor of International Relations at Harvard University, told Xinhua that the Bush administration's heavy reliance on "hard power," especially in Iraq, is hurting the country's "soft power."

Domestically, the Bush administration and the Republican party is paying a massive price for the war.

The Democrats took over both houses of Congress in the midterm elections last November, which was a clear signal that the voters had lost confidence in the Republican administration's Iraq policy.

When Bush recently insisted that the war is still winnable, the Foreign Policy magazine said that eventually, a number of winners might emerge out of the Iraq war, but the United States is obviously not going to be among them.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, a network of US anti-war groups, said in a statement on the war's fourth anniversary that like in the Vietnam War era, present US policy-makers in fact know that they have lost the war.

However, rather than admitting defeat, they are still determined to pay an increasingly heavy price for their mistakes, it said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 20, 2007)